Aurora Innovation, Inc. (AUR)
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Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026

Sep 10, 2026

Summary

Autonomous trucking operations have launched driverlessly, with rapid hardware and production scaling, expanding operational domains, and strong regulatory progress. The business is transitioning to a Driver-as-a-Service model, supported by major partnerships and a robust financial outlook, aiming for profitability by 2028.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay, great. Thank you everybody for joining. My name is Mark Delaney, and I cover Aurora for Goldman Sachs. I am very pleased to have with us, yet again this year, Chris Urmson, who is the Co-founder and CEO of Aurora. Thanks for coming.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Glad to be here. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Well, let us jump right into it. I mean, a lot of interesting stuff that Aurora has been working on, several exciting announcements on your journey, and now launch of autonomous trucking. So, really exciting stuff. And maybe we can start right there, because the company announced actually just this July that you have started driverless operations without an observer.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Maybe you can talk more around how that launch has gone, any key learnings so far?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. Now that we've woken everybody up, so glad to have everyone here. Yeah, it's gone incredibly. It's been a long journey. A year ago, we proved that the technology worked with our launch then. This year, we've been able to launch our second-generation hardware. AV is really hard, let me remind you. This is really a platform that'll allow us to scale up to 1,500 units, and then put us in position to go scale with our third-generation hardware that comes online at the end of next year. It's been great to see it out on the road. It's been another proof point that's enabled customer enthusiasm and excitement and helped move those conversations forward. It's really just the starting line for us building and scaling the business.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Any surprises or things you didn't expect to have that you've learned just since you've taken the observer out?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

It feels good.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

It's a lot of work from the team. We launched last year, began operating driverlessly, but we had the optics challenge, as there was a person sat there as this observer. We knew the bar we were holding it to. We knew that it was safe and operating. But it's very different for the outside world to have that visceral image of, no, there's nobody there. The Aurora Driver is fully operating this. I think that's been very powerful. Even the most cynical observers can look at that and say, "Oh, this is real.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

No, very exciting stuff. In order to get those vehicles out, you outfitted a truck. You're using Roush as a partner to do some of that upfitting, as well as some in-house upfitting capabilities. Maybe just talk about some of the costs and implications of doing the upfit model here in the, at least near-term.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. Our second-generation hardware kit is a major step function, both in performance but also in cost reduction. That first generation was really to prove the technology worked. The second generation was about actually having something that was commercially viable in market that we can ultimately be profitable with, and we're seeing that in practice. Roush is great. If you've heard me talk about our strategy in the past, it's really been one of let us focus on what we do best in world, and then go work with folks who are best in world at what they do. That's what Roush brings to the table. They are a very well-known quantity in the automotive space, where if you're an OEM and you need something modified and scaled up or repaired, they're the folks who do it.

If you buy an F-150 Raptor, Roush made it a Raptor instead of an F-150. So they know how to do volume. They're working with us now on mass production of this, or large, I guess modest scale in OEM's terms for automated vehicles, large scale production. We're off to the races. We're in that period of production hell, I guess some people might call it, as we get the ramp up. But we're expecting 20 to 25 trucks on the road at the end of this month, and to be building 20 trucks a week in the not distant future here.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

That's great. Well, those trucks need to drive somewhere, and one of the key initiatives of the company has been expanding the operating design domain in terms of where you can drive, weather conditions.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

One of the interesting things I thought Aurora has been focused on has been driving right to customer sites

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

not just on highway. Tell us a little bit more around how you're doing with that direct to customer endpoint part of the ODD.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. This is just one of the things that just makes sense. Customers want their stuff to go from A to B, not from some other C to D. This has been core to how we've been thinking about the business for a very long time, and we're seeing this in action. We've been operating from customer endpoints for some time now. We're now, with our customer Detmar, operating from the sand mine to the distribution point, just running that many times a day in and out. We're continuing to operate more places for customers as well. So it's operating exactly the way we expected. It's important to remember that we've been driving between our terminals off-highway to these places. Our location in Houston is a 5-mile drive from the freeway to that terminal.

So it's not really surprising that we drive to these points for customers as well.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

You are already doing this today, not just for the off-highway, but even on public roads, you are doing that direct endpoint.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. When I say off, sorry. When I meant off-highway, I meant on public roads.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

It turns out that they do not just put the sand mine connected to the freeway.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Right.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

You have to drive through the town and get to the place. Similarly, when we talk with our customers in Phoenix, our customers in Dallas, these are places where we are going to endpoint locations for them today.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay. That makes sense. Well, another aspect of expanding the ODD is about lanes, and you've got a number of different routes you've been adding on. Talk a little bit more around where the company's

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

expanding to.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. We're really going where our customers need us today. We expect to have 200 trucks on the road by the end of the year, and it turns out Texas is big, and there's a lot of places for those trucks to go right there. At the same time, we are accelerating our ability to open new lanes. To open new lanes for us is really two parts. One is putting in place the map, so the truck can have this kind of anticipation of what's about to happen down the road and not just what it can see over its horizon. The other part, of course, is the competence to drive across the different features that are in the world out there.

On the mapping side, we've talked for a long time about our Atlas technology, this ability to shard the map and build it efficiently. That just continues to get faster and faster. The first lane, it took us, what, six years or something to open. The second lane took us six months, the third lane, six weeks, and we continue to see that accelerate. On the capability to drive, every time we open a new lane, we go through the place that we're going to operate and ask, "Is there something novel here?" Any time we find something novel, we'll go and build tests. Those tests will tell us, can the Aurora Driver operate through that or not?

If the answer comes back that we're not confident in the performance of it, then we add a little backlog onto the engineering cycle, then we kick it off. But every time we solve one of those things that's novel, that is not just solving it for that GPS coordinate here, right. It's solving it for every other instance of that thing that was novel there. So, if, for example, it was a three-way stop, was a thing that we couldn't handle or we hadn't got the tests in place for, once we've tested three-way stops, it's now okay, every other three-way stop that we would encounter is in scope and able to drive. And so you can see how very quickly, with not many places that you drive that are useful, you've accumulated the skills that are necessary to really generalize and operate broadly across the sub elements.

We're very excited about seeing.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

As you do some of those test and validation points, how much of that is something needs to be done with real-world test and validation, versus what do you think you can do with simulation, and can simulation replace a lot or all of some of those types of things?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

So simulation is a very broad set of technologies. Everything from replaying data and kind of ad-libbing what the actions are to generating the full synthetic perception system and everything in between. And we use a combination of all those tools to do this validation. So this is where we're seeing some real lift from generative techniques. So we can take a real-world scene and augment that in certain interesting ways. We have a process by which we will go ground that simulation with reality to have conviction that we're not just playing a video game, we're actually operating in a simulated world that's reflective of reality. And then we can use that to get to the point where we're now confident that this thing's actually working and go release this 70,000-lbs truck down the road.

One of the things that we do not believe in is kind of one-shot YOLO. Like, "Oh, we saw it work once. Cool. Let's let it go." That's not how you deliver a safe, real product into the world. That's how you cause real damage.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

I think it dovetails well with my next question, which is on your approach to AI more generally and obviously guided by safety. You've written a lot and talked a lot about Verifiable AI. Tell us more about what that means for Aurora.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. Verifiable AI means making sure we are using the most cutting-edge techniques, but ensuring that we have the tools and the architecture so that we can have conviction that they're actually going to behave the way we want. Again, when you're driving a 70,000-pound thing down the road at 70 mi an hour, it's not okay to have an oopsie moment. If you're really just going to throw data in one end, train a model, and kick it out in the road, and talk about the magic of AI, you're destined to have these problems. We see it constantly in the entertaining output we get from LLMs. A massive amount of value and opportunity there, but they brain fart, for lack of a better word for it, pretty regularly, and we just can't afford that.

For us, Verifiable AI is this combination of how do we take these modern techniques, use them, but put them in a sufficient box so we can actually test and validate them, and that we can put constraints on how they operate such that we know that the behavior's going to be good.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Said another way, you are not an end-to-end AI proponent.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

No. I think that, again, the tools are super useful, but a black box between sensors and pedals, where you just hope that the outcome is always going to be right, is a recipe for disaster.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

I know you and I have spoken about how important this might be for regulations and talking to regulators, because you can point to specific things and why your software made the choices it did. I know you are engaged right now, I think with some regulators, including in California.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Maybe talk around some of the key regulatory things that Aurora is working through.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. So we continue to be really happy with the regulatory environment in the U.S. It's a giant market, of course, and it's an important market for us, and continue to see really positive support both at the state and federal level. Recently, California put in place regulations that allow automated trucks on the road. This has been a many-year journey to get there, and so we're excited to see those. We've already received our testing permit. We expect it'll take some time to move through that regulatory process. I think the DOT in California is being appropriately careful. So we'll just continue to work through that, work with them to get this technology unlocked in the state of California here.

At the federal level, again, we're seeing tremendous support and traction in the surface reauthorization bill this year, this explicit engagement around automated vehicles and automated trucking. So we're seeing really positive traction there. The Secretary of Transportation, Secretary Duffy, has really taken a step forward with this innovation agenda, ensuring we maintain safety but continue to allow America to innovate in this space.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

I think one of the other angles there was around you potentially needing to warn other cars if there is a breakdown and the truck's on the side of the road. This is a longstanding regulation, but the existing one was like a person has to walk and put these

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Has to put some flares and cones

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

flares and cones.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Where are you with the warning lights and more of a digital solution?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. So back in the day, somebody thought, "Hey, it would be good if people put triangles or flares behind cars." There was no data to support it, but it seems like not a bad idea, and that got turned into regulation. So obviously when we do not have a person in the truck, we could find ways to do this. We can imagine a little dropper on the back of the truck that drops triangles or flares, but we would prefer to do something more rational. That is turn on blinking lights. This is what police vehicles do. This is what other emergency response do. This is what construction vehicles do.

This is what tow trucks do to indicate, "There is something here, do not hit me." So we made the deep, bold, innovative step of saying, "Let us do that for trucks." We have used it, we have collected the data now to show that it is actually as effective, if not more effective, than dropping cones. So we have an exemption from the DOT to move forward with this, and we look forward to having a more permanent kind of common sense solution for this.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Very helpful. I want to talk on the ramp. You already said earlier on track for the 20 to 25 trucks by the end of this quarter and 200

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yep

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

by the end of the year. You also mentioned production is difficult early stage and a lot of companies have made that

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Welcome to physical things. Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Maybe just talk about how you're working with supply chain.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Actually, the theme of this conference has been certain components are pretty tight right now.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Anything you would point to as you are working through that ramp?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. I think this is one of the things where we have a really strong advantage relative to competitors in the space, right? The part that gets the headlines is the very cool and technically complicated and kind of sexy AI driving stuff. We are very good at that. We are best in world at that. But for that to actually go out into the world and do something, you need the physical parts to put it on the truck. This is where our first-generation hardware was stuff we made in-house. We knew how to test it, we were confident in the safety of it, but we could produce that at the scale of tens of things. The generation two hardware that we just launched, we work with Fabrinet, which is a global contract manufacturer, that we can produce at the scale of 1,500 units.

We talked about Roush earlier and the supply chain. We have to upfit those trucks to add by-wire capability to them and add our Aurora Driver kit onto that. That allows us to get to a scale that is unprecedented in automated trucking and will allow us to bring customers along to kind of allow them to experience it, to start to build this into fleets and actually really gain significant traction and ultimately generate meaningful revenue. Then our third-generation hardware, we are co-developing with AUMOVIO, and that is produced at scales of tens of thousands of units. That is where we get to true scale and true inflection in the business. That path that we have been on of simultaneously developing the first, second, and third-generation hardware has been critical to enable us to go scale. For us, this is gigantic, right?

We think we have a multi-year lead on the hard tech AI driving capability. We think we have a perhaps even larger multi-year lead on the supply chain and hardware side of this, where if you do not have a path to produce the hardware, I don't even know what you're doing. We're clearly well ahead on that, so super excited there.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Very helpful. As you kind of exit this year with the 200 trucks, you further ramp into 2027. As you do ramp in 2027, maybe talk about the business model in terms of do you haul the cargo as well and as Transportation-as-a-Service, or do you do more just as a virtual driver and as Driver-as-a-Service next year?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. It's going to be very exciting, right? Today we're operating a handful of trucks. We will be operating 20 to 25 trucks driverlessly by the end of the month. We will be adding 20 trucks a week as we get into Q4. Just the scale of that growth in this space is, again, it's super exciting. It is turning a corner. Today we operate in what we call Transportation-as-a-Service, which means we own and operate the trucks. We operate them for carriers. We don't go out and bid with shippers. That's not our business. We are not a trucking company. We operate under contract for companies like Werner, Schneider, Hirschbach, FedEx, Detmar, and several others, where we're providing capability for them.

This allows them to experience the benefits of automated driving, to see these trucks in action, and get a way to have a relatively low risk opportunity to learn about the technology and then commit to it. As we go into 2027, we will transition to Driver-as-a-Service. This is where customers go from having us own and operate the asset to leaning into their core strengths of being able to own, operate, and maintain those assets and pay us a subscription fee for driving it. This is the long-term model we've been talking about for our business for the last several years. We want to be asset light. We want to focus on what we do best in world, which is build that driving capability and allow our customers to excel and benefit from that technology, but run their business in the way they're used to.

We had a very exciting announcement earlier this year with Hirschbach, where we signed an MOU with them for 500 tractors, where we will provide the driver service, they will own and operate the tractor. We continue to have further conversation with other customers for that volume in 2027 and beyond.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

From the conversations you are having or the MOUs you have even signed, is your sense that customers are willing to do the Driver-as-a-Service model on upfitted trucks?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yes. They want this model. If you are a major carrier in this country, you see your ability to own, operate, and maintain that asset as a competitive advantage. That is what you do best in the world, along with the customer service and the rest of the operational rigor that you put around it. For us, being able to slot into the business that they already have, their model today is they buy the asset, they pay someone to drive it for them, and they do the rest of the work around that. That is what our business model will look like to them, and that is exciting and compelling. Yes, folks are interested in these Roush upfit International trucks.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

One of the really interesting parts of the business model on Driver-as-a-Service, at least in the longer term, is that not only do you get paid per mile, but you are going to pay on cost per mile with this Gen-3 and with AUMOVIO.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yep.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

But in the 2027 timeframe, if you do Driver-as-a-Service, do you still have that structure where you pay cost per mile, or is it going to be a little different for a period of time?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

No. Maybe I can just unpack that for a moment. So the partnership we have with AUMOVIO is this kind of first-of-its-kind agreement where we're co-developing with AUMOVIO the hardware that will make up our third-generation kit. The economics of that are what we call Hardware-as-a-Service. So they're investing upfront to develop it. They'll put in place the manufacturing capability to manufacture it, and then they will finance the hardware, and then we pay them on a per mile basis for the utilization of that hardware. So this is great for us because it means that we don't have this massive upfront capital expenditure that we have to carry on our books to support our customers owning and operating these assets.

It's great for our friends at AUMOVIO because for decades, these companies have tried to get into value-based pricing instead of the should-cost pricing that all the OEMs beat them down to. So it will create a really interesting, significant revenue stream for them. It creates a really interesting, significant revenue stream for us, and so it's very much aligned. By the way, it's 100% aligned with our customers because the more that truck drives, the more money they make. So all the way down the stack, everybody makes more money the more these things operate. So we're all aligned. Now, with our second-generation hardware, we don't have that structure. So these we will have to have on our balance sheet and finance them in some way.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

All right. No, very helpful. But yeah, a very interesting longer-term business model.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

100%

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

in my opinion. Yeah.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

We have to go through this phase to get to that phase, right? It's important to realize that if you're a tier 1 manufacturer, you don't get out of bed for less than 10,000, generally tens of thousands of units. So to bridge the gap from onesies of units to thousands of units, you have to do something. That's what we've been able to do with this Fabrinet partnership in the interim.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay. You mentioned Hirschbach already, and you've got the MOU there for 500 trucks. Any sense on timing as to when the full 500 could be realized?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

What we've said is those will be realized over 2027 and 2028.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay. Helpful. You are doing some upfitting now with Roush. You mentioned that ramping toward 20 trucks a week, so obviously some volume opportunity there. You also have ambitions to integrate lineside. You have formal announcements with both PACCAR and Volvo.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

What sort of that opportunity, what would that look like as you-

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

move to lineside integration?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

It is exciting because it is more than ambitions.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

We are executing on this. With Volvo, they are producing vehicles lineside today. They have announced that in Q1 of 2027, they will begin operating driverless trucks. Those will be Aurora-driven trucks. They expect to have 300+ of them on the road by the end of the year. As our Gen-3 hardware comes online, those will be integrated lineside as well. That is where they get very excited because that is now series production scale and off to the races. We are super excited about that. That has been a multi-year investment of effort from both companies.

It is hard to understate how hard it is to bring a fundamentally new technology into one of these vehicle manufacturing lines, and the effort we have put in to do that has been meaningful. It has been meaningful by this tremendous partner we have with Volvo, and so we are very excited about that. With PACCAR, as you probably all know, PACCAR does not share timelines on any product they are going to ship. What we can say there is that we are working with them to lineside install the third-generation hardware, and we expect that to come to market.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay. Helpful. Given that you are currently working with International Trucks and upfitting those,

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

with Roush, would it make sense to do one of these lineside integrations with International at some point?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

We would love to at some point, right? The approach we're taking right now is one that allows us to safely control the timelines to deliver those trucks, and allow us to meet the customer demand we have today and demonstrate this technology out in the world operating safely. It's been a really important tool for us, and it's one we will continue to use going forward. We're capacitized for 1,000 units a year or 20 units a week at this point. We can imagine scaling that up should we find appropriate reason to do so. In the long term, we do see value in having this lineside installed with International, and that would be great. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

We spoke a bit on some of the different generations of your hardware stack that you're bringing, Gen 2 now and then Gen 3 next year. Could you talk more around what that means for cost reduction? I think 50% for Gen 2, if I'm not mistaken. But talk about-

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Gen 2 cost downs and even what Gen 3 might look like.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. So when we moved from Gen 1 to Gen 2, we reduced the cost of bill of materials by about a factor of two, but we also extended the durability of the product by a factor of 3. 2 to three, somewhere in that range. When you think about the amortization of that cost over the million-mile life of the product, that's a pretty big deal. Now as we move to the AUMOVIO-produced third-generation hardware kit, that will be another significant step down on order of a factor of two or so.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay. I think on the last earnings call, you said you are already starting to work with AUMOVIO and getting ready for that next year. Are things going to land?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. These automotive programs are many-year programs, as you know. We have been working with them for, I don't know, five years or so at this point. We are well along in that program and continue to expect to launch that in the back half of next year. That, by the way, is another superpower for us on this supply chain side, right? For a company like us, we are very good at the system design. We are very good at the automated driving part of this. But managing a supply chain is a whole additional skill set. Doing significant DFM at scale is another skill set. This is a thing that we are smart people.

We could go hire a bunch of great people and do it ourselves, or we could lean into a partner who has aligned incentives and work with them and do it in a way that is much more capital efficient and delivers it exactly on the objectives we are trying to together. We are thrilled about this. This is a big deal, and Philip and the team at AUMOVIO are tremendous, and we have grown together over the last several years.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

That is good to get that update. I guess, speaking of partnerships, Uber has been a partnership of yours.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

They've owned equity from part of the

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

some of the tech team that you brought over years ago from Uber.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Also, I think Uber Freight as well.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yep.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

They did sell some stock. It's public.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

I don't know if you can share anything around how that partnership is going, any changes given-

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

with what they did kind of-

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

I appreciate you bringing it up. This is one of those questions. Maybe just take it head-on. The question is, "Hey, Uber is a big shareholder. Did they know something I don't? They're dumping it because they know that." The answer is no. Definitively, no. Uber has been clear, the management team over there, Dara has been very clear that they had put a lot of money into our partnership. We're a significant shareholder, and they need to recycle that capital from us into their automated robo-taxi fragmentation strategy to ensure that there are many players to support their marketplace on the AV side of it. It makes total sense. They've been clear and transparent about it. I continue to very much appreciate Dara, continue to very much appreciate the relationship we have with Uber and Uber Freight.

I'm also actually kind of happy to see it happen. It sucks those days. But the fact that we're taking this large shareholder and dispersing those shares out into folks who want to hold the stock, if you look at the quality of the shareholder base we have, it is awesome. It had to happen at some point. Because I like Dara, I think he should have held it longer and actually made more money off the shares. But for everyone who's come into the stock, I think this is great, and it allows us to diversify the shareholder base into something that is actually long-term sustainable. Because at some point, they're not Berkshire Hathaway. At some point, they're going to divest it. Let's do it now, get it out of the way.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Helpful context. I want to talk a bit about the business model and pricing. At the 2024 Investor Day, Aurora spoke about how ASPs on the Driver-as-a-Service model could be $0.65-$0.85.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yep.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Obviously, there's been a lot of inflation in the whole economy, including in wages for truck drivers. As you think about the economics of the business, any thoughts you can share around where pricing could land?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. I think the last time we shared something around pricing, we said we expect it to be $0.85 plus per mile in Driver-as-a-Service. We continue to see that moving in a higher direction, right? The cost of labor is going up. It will continue to. This government has taken, this administration has taken a stand about removing non-domiciled commercial drivers from the market. That further tightens what was already an undersupply of drivers. We expect this to continue to go up. So we look forward to having an Aurora Driver in market, working side by side with people driving trucks. We continue to see that human labor cost as a very significant pricing umbrella for our product.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah, I think some of the data you shared, and it's third-party data, but driver wages and benefits alone are north of $1 per mi and have been increasing.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. Our best estimate today is that based on ATRI, which is the American Transportation Research Institute, that direct wages plus indirect are somewhere around $1.18 a mi. When you think as a customer of Aurora, the cost of the driver that we can provide, the fact that we will improve fuel economy for you. Today, we are seeing 10% improvement in fuel efficiency, like for like, between our automated vehicles and when our humans are driving the trucks. Given the cost of diesel today, that is actually a pretty big deal. The improvement in road safety that we expect you will see, and then the fact that you will be able to utilize this asset twice as much. All of that means that this will be transformational for your business as a customer, and we look forward to really helping our customers realize that benefit.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Your autonomous technology, both from the software and hardware side, can be applicable to a lot of different areas.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yep.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

You guys have spoken about the potential to do robotaxis. You also have an interest in LIDAR.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yep.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Some LIDAR companies are even taking their semiconductor chips and trying to repurpose those into other areas.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

like into the data center. We'd love to get your thoughts. I know you can probably talk about this for an hour.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

But any kind of things where you may think about your

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Plans

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

software or hardware being applicable to other areas that you can point to?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Let me begin by saying truck in the U.S. is a $1 trillion market. We are well ahead in that market, and we are going to go play to win in that market.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Right? Shame on us if we squander that opportunity, because we can create an immense amount of social good, an immense amount of economic value, and an all-out value for our shareholders and customers. Right? So let us go win that, and make sure we don't take the eye off the ball there. At the same time, the capabilities we've built as a company to understand the world, to validate safety-critical software. If you think about an 80,000-lbs truck driving down the road at 70 mi an hour, that is pretty freaking safety critical. And be able to take that process and tools and all the rest of the infrastructure we have and point it at other applications is super exciting. Right?

Whether that is look at medium-duty trucks, box vans and box trucks, or whether that is go look at robotaxi, or whether that is looking mining and agriculture or aviation and drones. There are a lot of places where we can go find ways to take this competence we've developed and apply it, and we're going to start doing that. Of course, we're going to be looking at international markets as well that are very relevant. But we are not going to take our eye off the ball of delivering the product promise here in the U.S., and making sure we take every advantage we can of the lead we've invested and built.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay. No, makes a lot of sense. Maybe talk about funding the company.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

You are still cash flow negative. You talked about a path to-

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

be cash flow positive, but how long might that take and any sense of the capital that may be needed in the meantime?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah. We feel like we are in a very strong position. We had a strong balance sheet of, I think, $1.2 billion on the balance sheet at the end of last quarter. That position is as well to go win in this space, we think. We continue to expect to get to free cash flow positive or run rate basis in 2028. We feel very strong about our position.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Well, I would be remiss if I did not mention you have an Investor Day coming up in just-

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

We do.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

a couple of weeks. I will be seeing you shortly in Texas.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yep.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

But anything you would point to that investors should be looking out for as we head to Dallas?

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

It has been a couple of years since we have hosted one. We are very excited to have folks out there. I think we will take an opportunity to share a bit more about the business. We will be offering folks there an opportunity to come ride in a driverless truck, which is pretty darn cool. So tune in and look forward to seeing you then.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

I have got my slot on the agenda, so I am really looking forward to doing that. You and I were talking, the last one you did in Pittsburgh was kind of-

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

on the test track, and it was really fascinating to see it from standing on the side.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

This one we'll actually be doing it ourselves.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

It was fun, right? I still remember walking up to our test track and you see these two giant trucks driving around, and it kind of felt like swimming with whales. It's a whole other level of real once you get in the truck and it's on the road. When you do that and there's nobody behind the seat, and it's just and knowing that this is happening day in and day out is a big deal and I think it's going to be It's a lot of fun, right? I'm still an eight-year-old at heart. You see a big truck, that's pretty darn cool, and then you get into it and it just goes. It's spectacular.

Mark Delaney
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Well, I can't wait to see you in a few weeks. Chris, really appreciate you joining yet again this year.

Chris Urmson
Co-founder and CEO, Aurora

Appreciate it. Thanks so much.