Honda Motor Co Ltd will invest $2.75 billion (2.11 billion pounds) and take a 5.7 percent stake in General Motors Co's Cruise self-driving vehicle unit, to jointly develop autonomous vehicles for deployment in ride services fleets around the world.

Honda's partnership comes months after Japan's SoftBank Group made its own multibillion-dollar commitment to Cruise. That puts Cruise in a league with Alphabet Inc's Waymo unit in terms of resources and aggressive plans to launch commercial services.

Honda, which has lagged behind many of its rivals in developing self-driving vehicles, is paying $750 million upfront for the equity stake in GM's Cruise and will contribute another $2 billion over 12 years in development work and fees, the companies said on Wednesday.

The deal, which calls for Honda to provide engineering expertise, extends cooperation between the two automakers in a technology that has enormous costs and risk but no market-ready products.

Other global automakers are forging similar alliances to share the uncertainty and huge price of developing technologies that have yet to gain widespread consumer acceptance.

GM shares were up 3.1 percent in early afternoon trade.