Recently Microsoft, a famous software company estimated to be worth $990 billion, has joined an investment of $2 billion in a self-driving car company owned by General Motors, also known as GM. This car company named, Cruise has since risen in value now being at an estimate of $30 billion.

Cruise was founded back in 2013. Three years later GM gained ownership of this company in 2016. Executives of GM, during 2017, have said that they expected driverless taxi services to one day be a bigger and

more profitable business than selling vehicles directly to customers.

Microsoft has now joined Honda in this investment. Honda has been a major investor that begun their help for Cruise in

2018, when they announced their investment of $2 billion dollars over the course of 12 years. Honda has been helping GM in the process of building a self-driving car named Origin, for the purpose of taxis and delivery.

Microsoft will be collaborating on the creation of software, becoming their cloud provider and partnering for the hardware engineering, cloud computing, and manufacture of their soft wear, mechanisms, and the products themselves.

“Advances in digital technology are redefining every aspect of our work and life, including  how we move people and good,” says Satya Nadella, a Microsoft CEO. “As Cruise and GM’s preferred cloud, we will apply the power of Azure to help them scale and make autonomous transportation mainstream.”

Cruise will now be using Azure, a cloud and edge computing platform used by Microsoft to commercialize the solutions these vehicles may provide to conveniences in everyday life.

GM has been making various positive statements about Microsoft’s help and investment in this project. Mary Barra, a GM CEO has said that Microsoft is a “great addition” to assist them in this process.

GM has described their work with Microsoft as a “preferred public cloud provider to accelerate its digitization initiatives, including collaboration, storage, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.”

The investments and long term relationships being formed between Microsoft and Cruise is helping Cruise get exposure and more value to the company’s name.

With the involvement of big companies like Microsoft and Honda, GM’s plans for cruise and the self-driven vehicles may be taking big steps forward in technology and travel. The software and many parts of the companies that have invested will be helpful during their work. The help of these companies could provide advancements to this companies vehicles and transportation itself.