GM's Cruise Automation team grows to 100 employees

General Motors Co.'s Cruise Automation autonomous vehicle software start-up now has 100 employees, up from 40 when GM acquired it, GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra said Thursday. Romulus -- General Motors Co.'s Cruise Automation autonomous vehicle software start-up now has 100 employees, up from 40 when GM acquired it, GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra said Thursday. Barra, who was a keynote speaker at the World Mobility Leadership Forum held at Detroit Metro Airport, said people want to work on something that will be commercialized. "That's been one of the reasons that we've been able to grow this very specific type of resource of software artificial intelligence machine learning type of skill set and attract the talent because they see General Motors' commitment," Barra said. GM announced in March that it would buy Cruise Automation, a San Francisco-based software company that it hopes will quicken its development of autonomous vehicle technology.