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Ghost Autonomy , a startup working on autonomous driving software system for car maker partners , has keep out down , TechCrunch has get word .
The startup , which had raised almost $ 220 million , posted a noteon its website that it ended worldwide operations and wound down the company as of Wednesday . The fellowship employed about 100 people and had operations in Mountain View , Dallas and Sydney .
“ We are proud of the substantial proficient innovations and progress the Ghost team made on its delegation to deliver software - defined consumer autonomy , ” the note on its internet site register . “ The path to long - term profitability was incertain given the current financing climate and long - term investiture command for autonomy growth and commercialisation . We are exploring likely long - term destinations for our squad ’s innovations . ”
The shutdown come just five month since the startuppartnered with OpenAI through the OpenAI Startup Fundto gain early access to OpenAI system and Azure resources from Microsoft . Ghost also receive a $ 5 million investiture from OpenAI . It most recentlyclosed a $ 55 million down around last yearthat include early investors Keith Rabois at Founders Fund and Mike Speiser at Sutter Hill Ventures .
At the time , Ghost co - founder and CEO John Hayes brag the company ’s architectural plan toexplore the applicationsof multimodal large language models ( LLMs ) — AI models that can understand schoolbook as well as images — in self - drive . He debate that LLMs provide a new way to understand “ the long tail , ” adding reasoning to complex tantrum where current theoretical account return short . expert were skeptical of the advance .
Like so many startups trying to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology , Ghost has shifted its approach over the years . The startup , originally calledGhost Locomotion , was founded in 2017 . The companymade its public debuttwo years later with $ 63.7 million in total investment from Rabois of Founders Fund , Vinod Khosla at Khosla Ventures and Speiser at Sutter Hill Ventures , among others , and a plan to develop a kit that would allow privately owned passenger vehicles to ram autonomously on highways . The company say it would have that tech in 2020 .
After that deadline came and went , Ghostraised another $ 100 millionin 2021 with an adapted programme to concentre on clangour bar technical school . The Series D backing turn was lead by Sutter Hill Ventures and the inclusion body of Founders Fund and Coatue . Hayes told TechCrunch back in 2021 that the inauguration had n’t completely closed the door on the consumer kit role model but had turned its tending to universal collision avoidance engineering in an exploit to get to market quicker .
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His premise was that an sovereign drive system did n’t need to recognize and categorize physical object prior to avoiding them . The company was instead cut across the movement of clusters of pixels in a scene . Most other autonomous systems begin by identifying an aim and then use image localisation principle to determine its size , space and other relevant feature film . That scheme is used because different objects — even those of the same size — can comport other than .
Hayes , who was strain Wednesday via email , say the company had completed a main road driving mathematical product and was moving in urban environments through what he described as “ last - mile livery . ”
“ finally , the long time required to bring the product to market could not be financed , ” he write .
