Autonomous vehicle company Aurora Innovation Inc. (NASDAQ: AUR) is officially trading publicly, marking the latest Pittsburgh-based company to participate in an IPO this year.
On Nov. 2, shareholders of Reinvent Technology Partners Y (NASDAQ: RTPY), a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) led by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga founder Mark Pincus, voted in favor of the company's planned merger with Aurora. That ticker has since been swapped in favor of Aurora's and all previous shareholders of RTPY stock now have an equal number of shares in Aurora.
Trading of Aurora's stock began at $11.25 per share, up 13% from the RTPY close of $9.94 the previous day. Trading has since fallen and hovered around $10 per share as of noon on Thursday. A regulatory filing on Tuesday listed that gross proceeds raised from the merger as well as Aurora's cash on its balance sheet as of Nov. 1, 2021, equals approximately $1.8 billion, down from the projected $2.5 billion the company expected when details of the deal were first announced in July.
"This is a thrilling moment," Aurora CEO Chris Urmson said during a speech in New York on the floor of the Nasdaq stock exchange before the market's opening. "It's such an exciting milestone for Aurora, for our partners, our customers, our investors and the entire industry. We're working to launch an incredible product in trucking, we're building an incredible product for passenger vehicles and we'll continue to build a long line of products as Aurora grows over the coming decades."
Urmson founded Aurora in 2016 alongside fellow co-founders Sterling Anderson, its chief product officer, and Drew Bagnell, its chief technology officer. All three had previous autonomous vehicle experience at different companies before joining together to launch Aurora. It now employs 1,600 workers, the majority of whom reside in Pittsburgh.
Aurora's public debut is the latest of several local companies to have had an IPO in recent months. In mid-October, Cognition Therapeutics Inc. listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, which was preceded in September by Canonsburg-based Archaea Energy's public debut following a SPAC-related merger with Aria Energy LLC. In July, East Liberty-based language learning platform Duolingo Inc. went public.
