Chris Urmson is making sure shareholders and analysts are aware that Aurora Innovation Inc. is still planning to ship its commercial self-driving product for trucks before 2025 while setbacks in the broader autonomous vehicle development space accelerate.
As the CEO and one of three co-founders of the Pittsburgh-based company, Urmson most recently oversaw Aurora's successful pitch to investors in July that brought over $853 million—$33 million more than initially obtained—in fresh capital to Aurora following the close of an underwritten public offering and a concurrent private placement deal. Aurora went public in November 2021, raising about $2 billion in the process.
"We've made no secret of the fact that since we went public, we need to raise capital," Urmson said during Aurora's Q2 earnings call on Wednesday. "It's going to go primarily towards continuing to deliver and execute on the road map we have in place. … to launch commercially next year."
It's also critical capital that's needed to keep operations running as the nonrevenue-producing company finalizes the tech behind its self-driving product ahead of this planned commercial launch.
Aurora had a net loss of $218 million during its second quarter, a figure that's much higher than the $175 million to $185 million the company expects to lose over the next few quarters to come until the launch of its Aurora Horizon product, a subscription-based service that will bring self-driving capabilities to tractor trailers.
Meanwhile, Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving unit Waymo announced last week that it would be idling its AV development for trucks to instead focus on passenger taxi services in cities, a product Aurora is planning on launching later this decade following the deployment of its trucking-based AV product first. Other trucking-based AV firms, like Aurora's Pittsburgh neighbor Locomation Inc., have faced major setbacks in recent months largely due to funding restraints.
But despite the broader climate in this industry, Urmson told analysts on the call that it's currently "an incredibly exciting time" to be in AV development.
"We feel like we're making tremendous progress in looking to launch our trucks next year," Urmson said. "It's really exciting to see what companies like Waymo and Cruise are able to do with passenger vehicles in urban environments, and it's just exciting to see as somebody who's been working in this space for a long time. For us, we have said for many years that we expected consolidation to happen, [for] the landscape to clear and that we've been building the company, whether it's through the capital partners we've developed or strategic bets we've made on technology, to be positioned to be one of the folks who come out and have an impact and be victorious in this space."
Urmson closed the call by saying, "We continue to believe we're on track to launch a commercial product on the road with no driver in it next year. And, well, if that changes, we'll, of course provide updates as appropriate."
