Mary Barra Pushes GM into A.I. and Autonomous Driving
Observer ·
Mary Barra still depends on pickups and SUVs to fund GM. At its New York technology event, her executives outlined ambitions ranging from an A.I. assistant to vehicles that could one day run errands alone.
Mary Barra still runs a company deeply involved in manufacturing gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks, but she is increasingly turning to A.I. and autonomous driving to bolster General Motors ’ bottom line. The company released its third-quarter results on Oct. 20 and beat Wall Street’s expectations, only to see its stock drop after its guidance, a new stock-buyback authorization and comments about rising costs.
On Oct. 21 in New York, at an event that Observer attended with top executives, the company outlined new technology it will deploy both inside its plants and in its vehicles to become a more agile, A.I.-focused manufacturer. The new technology includes digital twins on the manufacturing line, OnStar A.I. and an effort to avoid the so-called “uncanny valley” of autonomous driving and aim eventually for occupant-free runs to pick up everything from the dry cleaning to the kids at soccer practice.
“Our vision is that eventually every vehicle should drive itself or its occupants anywhere, and we’re investing across the self-driving stack to make that real. From computing architecture to low-cost radar to frontier machine learning and A.I. to build a trusted system,” Sterling Anderson , the chief product officer at GM, told the audience at the event. Anderson is a former director of Autopilot programs at Tesla and was the Model X program lead there.
The Oct. 20 results showed quarterly adjusted earnings before interest and taxes rose 22 percent from a year earlier to $4.1 billion. GM executives poured cold water on the good news with a full-year adjusted earnings forecast of $12.75 to $13.75 a share, with a midpoint below the $13.41 analysts expected, according to Reuters . GM reported total revenue of $50 billion, supported by its light-duty full-size pickup business. Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson put the full-year headwind from commodity inflation, logistics and memory chips at roughly $2 billion, including costs already incurred.
GM’s board also authorized a multiyear $20 billion share buyback. According to GM Authority, GM had 849 million shares outstanding at the end of September, compared to 904 million at the end of 2025, a reduction of roughly 6.1 percent during the first nine months of 2026.
GM shares fell about 5 percent after the Oct. 20 report. By Oct. 22, shares were down around 10 percent following the earnings report and the Oct. 21 technology event.
To help offset rising costs from a shifting global market, trade wars, international conflicts, and tariffs, automakers are increasingly turning to digital products, software-defined vehicles and A.I. to turn a profit in the tumultuous market.
During the earnings call , Jacobson said GM was focused on four things to ensure growth. “First, launching our new truck flawlessly and capturing a rich mix in its first year. Second, unlocking additional capacity in full-size SUVs and high-volume crossovers. Third, growing our adjacencies in OnStar, Super Cruise, and Defense. Fourth, managing costs across warranty, EVs, fixed costs, and onshoring.”
Barra said deferred revenue from software and services was up 40 percent year over year, with one million new OnStar subscriptions this year and a Super Cruise-equipped fleet of one million vehicles. OnStar recognized more than $800 million in revenue in the quarter, up 15 percent. Its deferred revenue balance reached $6.8 billion , representing payments for services GM has yet to deliver. Barra said the company was “on pace to approach $7.5 billion in deferred revenue” by year-end. That balance differs from GM’s forecast of more than $3 billion in digital revenue it expects to recognize this year.
At GM’s tech event, the company unveiled a new OnStar A.I. assistant that will debut via a software update on the 2027 Cadillac Lyriq, with other properly equipped GM vehicles getting the feature in the months that follow. The new assistant will let occupants ask the car to do things like set temperatures and map charging stops by simply saying “Hey OnStar.” A new customer-facing app is planned for next year, including opt-in family-location features. The idea of sending a vehicle to collect groceries, dry cleaning or children belongs to GM’s longer-term autonomy plans, not the app’s launch capabilities.
GM said in its release blog that it’s centering customer privacy, and in an interview with Observer, Ed Nightingale , vice president of digital products, said GM recently released a new “privacy center.” “We’re trying to make it easy to opt out. I think that’s super important to build trust.”
That trust element is especially crucial since GM agreed to pay $12.75 million to settle California allegations that it unlawfully sold detailed personal information about consumer driving habits and geolocation to data brokers without adequate consent.
GM noted in its release that “Features are only activated if customers choose to use them, and they can switch them off at any time.” One demonstration at the Oct. 21 event showed the system giving a driver Halloween costume recommendations for a family.
On Oct. 21, GM announced that its planned autonomous highway-driving system would expand beyond the Cadillac Escalade IQ to high-volume SUVs and light-duty pickups. That is separate from today’s Super Cruise, which allows hands-free driving but still requires an attentive driver.
Super Cruise is available on more than 20 GM models and operates on compatible mapped roads, including some secondary roads and divided highways. It combines vehicle sensors with high-definition maps made by separate lidar-equipped mapping vehicles. GM says customers have driven more than 1.2 billion miles hands-free; that is a usage figure, not a measure of autonomous-training data. The company is also gathering data from consenting customers and a separate test fleet for its autonomous-driving work.
“That autonomy will expand not just from our halo vehicles and our full-size SUVs, but across all of it. It’ll land in light-duty pickups, it’ll land in crossovers, it’ll start on highways, and it’ll expand off the highways for the rest of your drive. Eventually, your car will be able to operate in what we internally call mission mode, handling tedious tasks on your behalf, like picking up groceries and dropping off laundry without you even in it. When you are inside a vehicle, self-driving opens up new possibilities for how you spend your time,” Anderson said.
While automakers have largely taken a piecemeal approach (using SAE’s different levels of self-driving as a guide) to reaching autonomy, Anderson told the audience that Level 3 autonomy is “a kind of awkward, uncanny valley.” He continued that GM is not developing Level 3 but aims to move directly to a fully autonomous system that can operate safely without continuous supervision.
The reality is that while computing power and the advancement of A.I. may make autonomous vehicle operation increasingly technologically possible, the regulatory environment, legal bounds and performance on real roads still matter before you see a GM vehicle headed to the dry cleaner to pick up someone’s laundry.