TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2018 - day 2 (29585110087)

Kyle Vogt is an American engineer, entrepreneur, technology executive and robotics pioneer. In 2013, Vogt founded Cruise Automation, where he currently serves as the company's President, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer. Cruise develops

self-driving car A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for S ...

technology and, since being acquired in May 2016, operates as an independent subsidiary of General Motors. Vogt and Cruise Co-Founder Dan Kan are the youngest senior directors at GM. Vogt and Kan were listed as number 7 on ''Fortune'''s 2016

40 Under 40 ''Fortune'' magazine's 40 Under 40 is a list of individuals the publication considers to be the most influential young leaders for the year. The list has existed in two phases: First, from 1999 to 2003, the list was presented purely as a numeric ...

List, an annual ranking of the most influential young people in business.

Early life

Vogt, a native of Kansas City, Kansas, has been passionate about the concept of autonomous driving since his teenage years. Growing up in suburban

Johnson County, Kansas Johnson County is a county in the U.S. state of Kansas, on the border with Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 609,863, making it the most populous county in Kansas. Its county seat is Olathe. Largely suburban, the county cont ...

, Vogt attended public schools in the Olathe and Shawnee Mission school districts. In 2004, he graduated from

Shawnee Mission Northwest High School Shawnee Mission Northwest High School is a fully accredited public high school located in Shawnee, Kansas, United States, serving students in grades 9-12. It is one of five high schools operated by Shawnee Mission USD 512 school district. The ...

. He studied computer science and electrical engineering as an undergraduate student at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. While there, Vogt participated in the 2004

DARPA Grand Challenge The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for American autonomous vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense. Congress has authoriz ...

, a seminal event that many key players in the autonomous vehicle space credited with spurring the development of technology fundamental to self-driving cars. Also while he was at MIT, Vogt interned at Roomba-maker

iRobot iRobot Corporation is an American technology company that designs and builds consumer robots. It was founded in 1990 by three members of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, who designed robots for space exploration and military defense. The com ...

and competed in two seasons of

BattleBots ''BattleBots'' (logo: Bꓭ)In season 10, the 2020-2021 TV season, the show introduced the "Bꓭ" logo is an American robot combat television series. The show was an adaptation of the British show '' Robot Wars'', in which competitors design and ...

Justin.tv and other ventures

Vogt left MIT during his Junior year to take a job with the team that would go on to form Justin.tv and Twitch. A Co-Founder at Justin.tv, Vogt was later described as the "creative genius" at the start-up, who "hero-coded" the company out of problems and designed the camera systems necessary for live streaming. As reported in Fortune, according to Justin.tv co-founder

Justin Kan Justin Kan (born July 16, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and Twitch, as well as the mobile social video application Socialcam. He is also the cofounder and former ...

, Vogt would "just, like, lock himself in a room for three days and code away and then emerge with something that worked." Justin Kan's younger brother and future co-founder of Cruise, Dan Kan, spent a summer interning at Justin.tv. In June 2011, Vogt became co-founder at both

Socialcam Socialcam was a mobile social video application for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone, that was launched March 7, 2011 and ended October 28, 2015. It allowed users to capture and share videos online and on mobile, as well as via Facebook, Twitter ...

and

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle co ...

, both of which were acquired, Socialcam for $60 million and Twitch by Amazon in a deal for $970 million.

Cruise Automation

Following his departure from Twitch, Vogt turned to autonomous vehicles and founded Cruise Automation in October 2013 as President and Chief Technology Officer. Early on, the company participated in

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, St ...

, a startup accelerator that mentors up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Cruise was acquired by General Motors in March 2016, reportedly for over $1 billion. In December 2021, after Cruise CEO Dan Ammann left the company, Vogt became interim CEO until February 2022 when he became CEO, maintaining his CTO and President titles.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Vogt, Kyle Year of birth missing (living people) Living people MIT School of Engineering alumni American company founders