AURORA INNOVATION

Chris Urmson was the former CTO of Google's self-driving car project — the one that became Waymo. He left in 2016 and founded Aurora with Sterling Anderson (ex-Tesla Autopilot lead) and Drew Bagnell (AI researcher from Carnegie Mellon and Uber).

In 2020, Uber gave up on self-driving and merged its Advanced Technologies Group into Aurora in a deal valued at $4 billion, giving Aurora Uber's AV tech, team, and a deployment partnership.

Aurora bets on autonomous trucking, not robotaxis. Their Aurora Driver technology powers Class 8 semi-trucks on long-haul interstate routes.

The model is driver-as-a-service — fleet operators pay per mile to use self-driving technology instead of hiring human truckers. Trucking is a better first market than taxis because highways are more predictable, routes are fixed, and the US trucking industry moves $800 billion in freight annually with a chronic driver shortage.

Aurora Driver (self-driving platform), Aurora Horizon (autonomous trucking service), Aurora Connect (future ride-hailing)

Focused on a Texas corridor — I-45 between Dallas and Houston — as the first commercial lane. Partnering with PACCAR and Volvo to integrate Aurora Driver into production trucks, and with FedEx, Werner, and Uber Freight for guaranteed demand.

The playbook: prove one route, then expand lane by lane.

Getting to commercial launch without running out of money. Aurora went public via SPAC in November 2021 at an $11 billion valuation, and the stock has dropped over 80% since.

They burn roughly $200 million per quarter in the testing phase. Getting regulators, insurance companies, and fleet operators to trust a driverless 80,000-pound truck on public highways is the real challenge.

Amazon, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, T. Rowe Price, Uber (ATG merger), PACCAR, Volvo, Continental