Aurora Innovation—which aims to begin rolling totally human-free trucks between Dallas and Houston by late 2024—raised $820 million in public and private stock sales Thursday to help make that plan a reality.
Aurora made $220 million by selling 73.33 million shares through a public offering, and raised a further $600 million through a private placement among new and existing new investors, according to SiliconANGLE.
“It’s an awesome day for the self-driving vehicle industry and Aurora,” Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO of Pittsburgh-based Aurora, said in a blog post. “This huge amount of funding gives us the runway through next year’s expected commercial launch and well into 2025.”
Self-driving tech was announced as ‘feature complete’ in April
Aurora Driver Beta 5.0 unlocked the critical capability to detect and appropriately respond to emergency vehicles like ambulances, fire engines, and law enforcement vehicles. [Video still: Aurora Innovation]
The company’s self-driving technology was announced as being “feature complete” in April. Now the company is “charging toward” what it calls its Aurora Driver Ready milestone by the end of this year, Urmson wrote.
“When we achieve Aurora Driver Ready, we’ll have confidence that the Aurora Driver could safely haul freight between Dallas and Houston without a human behind the wheel, setting us up for our commercial launch next year,” Urmson added.
You can read the full blog post here.
Aurora Innovation and Schneider National have partnered to autonomously haul freight between Dallas and Houston. [Photo: Aurora Innovation]
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