FILE PHOTO: A Cruise self-driving car, which is owned by General Motors Corp, is seen outside the company’s headquarters in San Francisco where it does most of its testing, in California, U.S., September 26, 2018. REUTERS/Heather Somerville

(The March 11 story corrects paragraph 1 to clarify statement was from General Motors unit Cruise)

(Reuters) - General Motors Co’s self-driving car subsidiary, Cruise, said it plans to hire 1,000 more people over the next nine months, as the No.1 U.S. carmaker aims to launch a robotaxi service by the end of 2019.

“We have plans to double in size by the end of this year,” Cruise spokesman Ray Wert told Reuters.

Wert said the majority of those hired will be engineers but didn’t give a specific number. The company currently employs more than 1,000 people.

The unit's human resources division will be led by file sharing and storage company Dropbox Inc's Arden Hoffman, technology news website TechCrunch reported here on Monday.

Cruise, valued at about $14.6 billion, also plans to triple its office space in San Francisco.