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Kyle Vogt, the former founder and CEO of self-driving car company Cruise, has a new VC-backed robotics startup focused on household chores. <\/p>\n
Vogt announced Monday that the new startup, called the Bot Company, has raised $150 million from former GitHub CEO and investor Nat Friedman, Pioneer founder and investor Daniel Gross, Spark Capital general partner Nabeel Hyatt, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Stripe co-founder John Collison and Quiet Capital.<\/p>\n
Vogt founded the startup with Paril Jain, who led the AI tech team at Tesla, and former Cruise software engineer Luke Holoubek.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re building bots that do chores so you don\u2019t have to. Everyone is busy. Bots can help,\u201d Vogt wrote on social media X<\/a>. \u201cSo many things compete for our time \u2014 commutes, longer working hours, and the complexities of modern life. Our team has spent years building robots (including the self-driving kind) that give people some of that time back, and we\u2019re taking that a step further with this company.\u201d<\/p>\n Vogt did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n The new endeavor comes five months after Vogt resigned as CEO of Cruise<\/a>, the autonomous vehicle startup that he founded in 2013 and was later acquired by General Motors. His resignation followed an October 2 incident that saw a Cruise vehicle run over and drag a pedestrian 20 feet, after the pedestrian had been hit by a human-driven car. The event, coupled with the company\u2019s response, prompted California regulators to suspend Cruise\u2019s deployment and driverless testing permits, effectively\u00a0ending its robotaxi operations<\/a>\u00a0in the state where the bulk of its operations were located.<\/p>\n Since his resignation, Vogt has maintained a relatively low public profile. His return, however, shouldn\u2019t surprise those who have followed his career. Prior to Cruise, Vogt had co-founded Justin.tv, a website that allowed anyone to broadcast video online; it later morphed into Twitch, a live-streaming platform acquired by Amazon in 2014 for $970 million. He also founded Socialcam, which was acquired by Autodesk for $60 million in 2012.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n