GM and Softbank are putting $3 billion into self-driving cars

CNN/Stylemagazine.com Newswire | 5/31/2018, 8:18 a.m.
Japan's Softbank is pouring more money into the future of American cars. Softbank will invest $2.25 billion in General Motors' …
General Motors Co. CEO Mary Barra

Chris Isidore and Peter Valdes-Dapena

(CNN Money) -- Japan's Softbank is pouring more money into the future of American cars.

Softbank will invest $2.25 billion in General Motors' autonomous vehicle efforts, months after it took a large ownership stake in Uber.

GM announced it is also investing $1.1 billion in the joint effort. CEO Mary Barra said the investment will allow GM to launch autonomous vehicles next year.

It's the biggest partnership between a tech investment company and an automaker in the effort to develop self-driving cars.

Softbank will own about 20% of a joint venture that has been set up to bring GM's self-driving technology to market. Softbank will invest $900 million now, and the additional $1.35 billion when GM's autonomous vehicles are ready for commercial deployment.

The self-driving car division of GM that is getting the investment is a separate company known as GM Cruise.

Both automakers and tech companies have been making a major push to develop the technology needed to bring self-driving cars to market. While many cars now on the market have features of self-driving vehicles, full self-driving cars have been limited to test vehicles to this point.

GM stock rose more than 8% in premarket trading on Thursday's announcement.

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