Aurora Innovation

Aurora was founded in 2017 by Chris Urmson, the former chief technology officer of Google/Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving team, which became known as Waymo. Previously, Urmson was a member of Carnegie Mellon's Red Team, which competed in DARPA's Grand Challenges for autonomous vehicles. His two co-founders are Sterling Anderson, former head of Tesla Autopilot, and Drew Bagnell, former head of Uber's autonomy and perception team.Aurora announced that it had signed deals with Volkswagen and Hyundai to develop self-driving software for commercial vehicles in January 2018. At CES 2018, which took place in the same month, Nvidia announced that they would be partnering with Aurora to provide hardware for Aurora's self-driving systems, such as Nvidia's Xavier processor. Aurora became the first self-driving vehicle company authorized to test its vehicles in Pennsylvania in October 2018.In May 2019, Aurora acquired Blackmore, a Bozeman, Montana-based company focusing on Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave lidar. In June 2019, Aurora announced a partnership with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to develop self-driving technology in commercial vans. As a result of this partnership, the company was able to acquire Chrysler Pacifica minivans for its fleet of test vehicles. In June 2019, Volkswagen also announced they would be ending their partnership with Aurora.Aurora expanded its operations to Texas in June 2020, bringing a fleet of test vehicles into the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In July 2020, Aurora debuted its own long-range lidar system called “FirstLight.” In December 2020, Aurora acquired Advanced Technologies Group , Uber's self-driving unit. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi subsequently joined Aurora's board. Uber also invested $400 million in Aurora and took a 26% ownership stake in the company.In January 2021, Aurora announced it was partnering with PACCAR to develop its first commercial product, a driverless truck. Their technology will be paired with PACCAR's Peterbilt 579 and Kenworth T680 semi-trucks. In February 2021, Aurora partnered with Toyota and Denso to develop self-driving taxis. In March 2021, Aurora acquired 5D lidar company OURS Technology, a silicon photonics startup. Also in March, Aurora announced it was partnering with Volvo Group to develop driverless trucks. Of the three largest truck manufacturers, Aurora has partnered with two; the third, Daimler AG, had previously announced it was partnering with Waymo for self-driving technology.In July 2021, plans were unveiled for the company to go public in a merger with the special-purpose acquisition company Reinvent Technology Partners Y, which had been set up by Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus. The deal values Aurora at $11 billion and provides close to $2 billion in new funding. The merger was completed and the company went public on Nasdaq in November.In March 2022, Aurora unveiled its test fleet of autonomous Toyota Sienna robotaxi. Following this, In May 2022, Aurora announced the development of the Aurora Beacon platform. The platform is a cloud-based mission control system designed for customers to optimise operations of autonomous vehicles via real time metrics such as status, location, and health of vehicles.In May 2022, Aurora announced the expansion of the organisations self-driving freight pilot with FedEx. The expansion is to include a new lane from Fort Worth to El Paso, Texas. The new lane challenged the company for its longest freight truck journey of about 600 miles, in which they will operate on a weekly basis. As of May, Aurora and FedEx have completed a total of 60,000 miles with zero safety incidents, according to the company.