General Motors (GM) said on Thursday that Japan's Softbank will invest $2.25 billion in GM's driverless car company Cruise Holdings. General Motors president Dan Ammann said that the investment of Softbank's Vision Fund will enable GM to deploy autonomous vehicles on a "large scale."
Mary Barra, CEO of Cruise Holdings, said the company is still functioning and will begin deploying the commercial passenger car series Cruise AV in 2019.
After Softbank’s investment in Cruise is completed, GM will also invest $1.1 billion in Cruise.
Once the transaction is completed, the Softbank Vision Fund will hold nearly 19.6% of the shares in Cruise.
Mary Barra shunned the question of whether General Motors intends to spin off Cruise into an independent company, saying that GM would "do only do things that best suit the interests of shareholders."
SoftBank's big investment is at rivals Tesla, Alphabet's Waymo and Uber are stepping up to compete for the first-mover advantage in autonomous vehicles. GM holds a large stake in Uber competitor Lyft.
GM Cruise is headquartered in San Francisco and includes Cruise Automation and Strobe, both responsible for GM's self-driving development and autonomous driving sensor development. Since GM acquired Cruise in $1 billion in early 2016, GM will be electric. And autonomous vehicles are seen as a key factor in the future of transportation.
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