Kyle Vogt, the former founder and CEO of self-driving car company Cruise, has a new VC-backed robotics startup focused on household chores.
Vogt announced Monday that the new startup, called Bot Company, has brought in former GitHub CEO and investor Nate Friedman, Pioneer founder and investor Daniel Gross, Spark Capital general partner Nabil Hayat, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Stripe co-founder John Has raised $150 million from. Collision and quiet capital.
Vogt founded the startup with Paril Jain, who led the AI tech team at Tesla, and Luke Holubek, a former Cruise software engineer.
“We’re building bots that will do the work so you don’t have to. Everyone is busy. Bots can help,” Vogt wrote social media x, “There are too many things competing with our time – travel, long working hours, and the complexities of modern life. Our team has spent years creating robots (including automated types) that give people some of that time back, and we’re taking it a step further with this company.”
Vogt did not respond to a request for comment.
The new effort comes five months after Vogt Cruise resigns as CEO, the autonomous vehicle startup he founded in 2013 and was later acquired by General Motors. His resignation followed an October 2 incident in which a pedestrian was struck by a human-driven car, after which a Cruise vehicle struck a pedestrian and dragged him 20 feet. The incident, along with the company’s response, prompted California regulators to effectively suspend Cruise’s deployment and driverless testing permits. Ending your robotaxi operation In the state where most of its operations were located.
Since his resignation, Vogt has maintained a relatively low public profile. However, his return should not surprise those who have followed his career. Before Cruise, Vogt co-founded Justin.TV, a website that allowed anyone to broadcast video online; It later changed to Twitch, a live-streaming platform that was acquired by Amazon in 2014 for $970 million. He also founded SocialCam, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2012 for $60 million.
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