DETROIT – Normal Motors is buying SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund 1’s fairness possession stake in its majority-owned Cruise autonomous automobile unit for $2.1 billion, the automaker introduced Friday afternoon.

Softbank first acquired a minority possession in Cruise in 2018. Its exit comes because the outstanding expertise funding agency was set to have to take a position a second tranche of $1.35 billion upon Cruise’s industrial deployment of automobiles, which GM will now pay.

It additionally follows Cruise CEO Dan Ammann abruptly leaving the corporate in December. Ammann was reportedly let go from Cruise by GM CEO and Chair Mary Barra, who additionally chairs Cruise’s board, over disagreements in technique, together with when to take the corporate public.

The announcement was made at the side of GM and Cruise additionally saying the launch of a “Recurring Liquidity Alternative Program”, through which Cruise workers with vested inventory choices will be capable of promote them to GM.

“Workers can promote as many vested shares as they like at a good value decided by a 3rd celebration,” Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt mentioned on Twitter. “Or they’ll maintain onto their shares and hope for appreciation over time.”

This system is seemingly meant to assist retain Cruise workers who could have been hoping for a windfall from an preliminary public providing of the corporate, one thing that Wall Road has been hoping for as effectively.

However it seems that GM and Cruise have determined to attend on that IPO. A Cruise IPO can be a “main distraction, particularly proper now” as the corporate is scaling up its newly-launched driverless ride-hailing service in San Francisco, Vogt mentioned on Twitter.

A GM spokesman mentioned SoftBank’s exit from the corporate was not associated to the worker program.