Cruise co-founder wrongfully demands $ 500 million for its stake in a deal with General Motors

In March of this year, General Motors carmaker announced plans to acquire a startup Cruise Automation for $ 1 billion - this turned out to be one of the largest deals of this year and the largest in the history of the accelerator Y Combinator. But the deal has not yet taken place because of an unresolved dispute with one of the co-founders of the company.

As President Y Combinator Sam Altman explained in his blog, after the information on the deal appeared, co-founder Jeremy Guillory demanded that he pay half the company's value to Cruise leader Kyle Vogt.
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“In the story there are many dirty examples of stories about people who appear from nowhere and require huge amounts of money. This is one of the least professional situations I have ever participated in, ”recalls Sam Altman.

Now representatives of Cruise are trying to obtain in court a confirmation of Jeremy Guillory’s lack of rights to half of all shares. According to the court statement, Jeremy never took part in writing the code or developing the company at any stages and began to demand the payment of his share only after the publication of news about the takeover of a startup by General Motors.

This information is confirmed by the head of Y Combinator - in his post, he noted that Jeremy had left Cruise even before interviews with accelerator representatives and had never participated in writing code or investing assets in a company. Despite this, the outcome of the trial is absolutely unpredictable - if an oral agreement on equal division of shares was indeed concluded between the co-founders, and subsequently Kyle Vogt had no complaints against Jeremy Guillory, the court could side with him.

Startup Cruise has been developing solutions for autopilot vehicles since its launch in 2013. The deal with General Motors should be key for Cruise thanks to the automaker's resources and best practices in this direction. That is why Cruise head Kyle Vogt in a lawsuit insists on the negative impact on the company of each day's delay in a deal with General Motors.