PS3 hacker, geohot's Self-Driving Car Startup Comma.ai gets $3.1 Million in funding

George Hotz, widely known by the moniker “Geohot” became famous for being the first to jailbreak an iPhone. He was also the guy who cracked the Sony PlayStation 3. Sony sued him, causing hacktivist groups including Anonymous and Lulzsec to rally around him. Hotz’s latest project is an autonomous car startup is called comma.ai and could just be an alternative to the self-driving technologies developed by Google and Tesla. It uses cheap, off-the-shelf parts to make self driving cars. The setup involves sensors, cameras and a smartphone app. The setup’s AI learns as it’s used, which is good, but do bear in mind that Google’s self-driving cars also do the same thing and have millions of miles of practice in both, the virtual and the real world. The eventual goal is to produce a less than $1000 kit that can be fit into any car to make it driverless. The kit will be sold to the consumers or directly to the automobile manufacturers.  The kit is designed to be easily installed. Tesla had offered to hire Hotz when he made an early version of his self driving car, but Hotz refused the offer. Comma just got a $3.1 million cheque from one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated venture capitalist firms,  Andreessen Horowitz. The money will be used to hire engineers, and convert the makeshift system into a finished product. Andreessen Horowitz has an illustrious portfolio of sound past investments. These include 500px, Airbnb, Buzzfeed, Facebook, Foursquare, Github, Imgur, Oculus, Pinterest, Skype and Twitter.