Aurora Innovation has raised $483 million in a secondary offering of shares, providing crucial funding to continue its push into autonomous freight transportation and demonstrating once again the large capital requirements of the self-driving technology sector.
“The opportunistic raise gives us headroom through 2026, putting us on track to deploy autonomous trucks at scale and become a cash-flow positive company, which we expect by 2028,” the company said in a statement.
The Pittsburgh company sold 134.2 million shares of Class A common stock at $3.60 per share on Aug. 2.
Other self-driving technology companies are also raising money to sustain operations as they find that developing autonomous vehicles has become more expensive and time-consuming than many expected.
Ford and Volkswagen closed Argo AI, their self-driving joint venture, in October 2022 after raising at least $3.6 billion in investment from the automakers and others. Hyundai’s Motional delayed its commercialization plans this year. Zoox just turned 10 and has yet to launch a commercial service.
After pausing operations and losing critical operating permits following a crash last year that injured a pedestrian in San Francisco, General Motors’ robotaxi subsidiary Cruise resumed autonomous testing with human safety drivers in May. It also received an $850 million cash injection from GM in May.
Alphabet Inc. said in July it would make a $5 billion investment in its self-driving subsidiary Waymo over several years.
“This is consistent with Waymo’s ability to develop the world’s leading self-driving technology,” Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said during the company’s quarterly earnings call on July 23.
After starting out developing autonomous technology for light vehicles, Aurora has pivoted to self-driving trucks. Aurora CEO Chris Urmson was previously one of the leaders of Google’s self-driving car project, now Waymo.
Volvo Trucks, one of its partners, has predicted a $42 billion market for autonomous freight transport in the southern U.S. Aurora supplies the autonomous driving system for Volvo’s VNL tractor.
“I envision a world where goods move safely 24/7/365 in self-driving trucks,” Urmson said in an Aug. 3 blog post discussing the secondary stock offering.
“Truck transportation is the backbone of the American economy, but our supply chains are fragile and the number of people wanting to drive trucks has not kept up with the demand to move goods,” he said.
Trucking companies and industry associations have warned for years that a growing shortage of long-haul truck drivers will drive up freight costs and hurt efficiency.
Aurora is operating self-driving trucks on several routes in Texas for customers that include FedEx and Uber Freight, and transportation companies that include Werner Enterprises, Schneider and Hirschbach. But those vehicles have human drivers acting as backups.
Urmson said Aurora will begin converting some of those routes to fully autonomous routes this year.
Although focused on trucks, Aurora maintains a foothold in the light vehicle sector.
It has a small fleet of Toyota Sienna minivans operating as robotaxis, but with safety drivers, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The company said its self-driving system could be used for both commercial and passenger vehicles.