Almost exactly one month since its public debut, Aurora Innovation Inc. (NASDAQ: AUR) announced the promotion of Richard Tame to serve as the company's first chief financial officer. The Pittsburgh-based AV company also announced other additions to its finance team.
The promotion for Tame, who is based in Pittsburgh alongside Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Drew Bagnell, comes after Tame previously served as the company's vice president of finance. The company's two other co-founders, CEO Chris Urmson and Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson, are based out of Mountain View, California, which is where the company previously maintained a dual headquarters location before it announced in September that Pittsburgh is the official home for the AV company.
Before working at Aurora, Tame acquired more than two decades of public accounting experience, leading finance teams at companies like Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Facebook-now Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) and Lyft Inc. (NASDAQ: LYFT).
"Over the last year, Richard’s leadership and financial expertise has helped shepherd the company through several acquisitions, expansion, and our path to being a public company," Urmson said in a statement in reference to the company's January 2021 acquisition of Uber ATG, Uber's (NYSE: UBER) self-driving unit, among other recent deals. "Naming Richard as CFO recognizes the incredibly important role he and his team have played in our growth and will continue to play as we commercialize our products."
Tame said he originally joined Aurora due to the company's potential to create a "revolutionary product" — the self-driving vehicle — while being a part of a startup the retains the work of experts from around the world, all of whom are working in a new and highly competitive industry. Aurora expects to ship its first product, the Aurora Driver, as a Driver-as-a-Service model for its self-driving trucking version called Aurora Horizon, in 2023. Its ride-hailing version of the product will debut in 2024 under the name of Aurora Connect.
"As we approach commercialization, we’ll share Aurora’s story and revolutionary technology to a broader investor audience," Tame said in a statement. "We are pioneering a new industry with the potential for transformational impact in the world and this means we need to find creative ways to engage and educate investors on Aurora's progress over time."
Other finance-related appointments include that of Stacy Feit, who will serve as its first vice president of investor relations, Helen Chue, who will serve as senior director of business risk and insurance and Katherine Jong, who takes on the role of senior director of financial planning and analysis.
Aurora's stock was trading at $11.20 per share as of 12:15 p.m. on Monday, up more than 12% since it went public following its SPAC merger with Reinvent Technology Partners Y.
