I agree.. I work for a big company in the valley and have a lot of professional experience doing similar things. Cruise approached me early on (before A, after YC). They seemed very inexperienced and naive. The LIDAR alone cost about an order of magnitude more than their claimed total package cost. A bunch of young kids way way over their head.

But this is really the punchline of the story - they offered $60K (for a senior role), about 1-3% equity - but I could pick from the "prize closet" as a signing bonus.

What's in this prize closet? XBoxes! Snowboards! trips to Tahoe! Ha!

No idea how they managed to build a team worth an small acquihire - much less a billion $ with that.

I expect they were acquired for 50-100M. Still nothing to sneeze at, but a comment on the state of the market considering their maturity.