According to Reuters, the Bot Company, a robotics startup founded by former Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt, has secured $150 million in a funding round led by Greenoaks.
Vogt launched the company alongside Paril Jain, former leader of Tesla’s AI tech team, and Luke Holoubek, a former software engineer at Cruise. Vogt has not yet responded to requests for comment.
This latest funding comes less than a year after The Bot Company’s inception. The startup, which aims to develop robots designed for household chores, originally debuted in May with $150 million in backing from high-profile investors, including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Pioneer founder Daniel Gross, Spark Capital general partner Nabeel Hyatt, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Stripe co-founder John Collison, and Quiet Capital.
Vogt’s new venture emerged just five months after he departed from Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company he founded in 2013 and later sold to General Motors. He resigned from Cruise after an October 2 incident, when a Cruise vehicle ran over and dragged a pedestrian 20 feet after the pedestrian had been hit by a human-driven car.
The growing excitement in the robotics space is largely driven by humanoid-focused companies like Tesla (TSLA.O) and startups such as Figure, which is currently seeking funding at a $40 billion valuation despite generating little revenue. Meanwhile, Cobot, founded by former Amazon executive Brad Porter, has raised $146 million to develop non-humanoid robots designed for industrial automation. The significant capital required to build and scale these technologies highlights the complexities of developing robots that seamlessly integrate into everyday operations.
