SV Icons: Chris Urmson, Aurora
Building the future of EV starting with trucks
Christopher Urmson is the CEO of Aurora Technologies, an autonomous vehicle company. With Sterling Anderson, the former director of Tesla Autopilot, and Drew Bagnell, Uber’s former autonomy and perception lead, Chris founded Aurora in 2017 to establish partnerships in the transportation industry to ensure the benefits of autonomous technology are distributed broadly.
Aurora offers the Aurora Driver, which consists of the sensor suite and the autonomy software. The Aurora Driver can operate on any vehicle type, including sedans and Class 8 trucks. Chris believes that with autonomous vehicles, Aurora will be able to reduce traffic fatalities and road congestion. Public transportation with the Aurora Driver can now drive on demand, increasing efficiency, improving access, and reducing costs. The biggest obstacle to adopting autonomous technology is predicting human behavior. As humans, we quickly adapt to someone’s driving behavior. For machine learning models, it takes time and effort to understand and learn the distribution of different driving behaviors.
Safety is a priority with any autonomous vehicle company, and Chris puts safety at the core of the company’s culture. Chris touts the company’s culture by referring to its Grounding Policy. Chris said about this policy, “All Aurora employees, from founders to our newest employees, are empowered to ground the fleet if they identify anything they consider a safety concern.”
He believes this level of trust granted to employees is the key to successful leadership. Chris believes that entrusting employees with the responsibility for the success of the company’s mission is how employees will continue to be intrinsically motivated.
He concedes that time management is difficult and finds himself fighting fires most of his time. What has helped Chris and Aurora is a supportive board consisting of experienced and technically seasoned operators. Chris relies on them for support and advice on the most pressing problems.
Aurora became public through merging with a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) in late 2021. The SPAC route gave the company certainty on its valuation and allowed Aurora to raise the necessary funding quickly. Aurora negotiated fair terms on its shares to align the interests of shareholders and employees.
The deal for Aurora to acquire Uber’s autonomous unit provided invaluable lessons and insights, which Chris was kind enough to share. We won’t share them here, but feel free to join our next SV dinners in person to learn from industry leaders firsthand!
Organizer: Georgi Koreli
Host: Chyngyz Dzhumanazarov
Editor: Jacky Lin
Chief contributors: Georgi Koreli, Max Sapozhnikov