Self-driving technology startup Aurora, which was founded by the former head of Google’s autonomous vehicle program, is the latest company to announ

Self-driving startup Aurora will raise $2 billion in SPAC merger

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2021-07-15 22:30:05

Self-driving technology startup Aurora, which was founded by the former head of Google’s autonomous vehicle program, is the latest company to announce that it’s going public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC). The deal will give Aurora about $2 billion in new cash when it closes, which will help the startup in its quest to become a provider of self-driving hardware and software to companies in the trucking and ride-hailing industries.

Aurora is merging with a SPAC called Reinvent Technology Partners Y that’s already listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and is run by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, and investor Michael Thompson). That trio is also in the process of taking electric aircraft startup Joby Aviation public with another Reinvent SPAC.

Founded in 2017, Aurora has a short history. But its executives have deep and diverse experience with autonomous vehicles. Chris Urmson, who architected Google’s self-driving car project before it was spun off as Waymo, started plotting Aurora in 2016. He eventually recruited Sterling Anderson, who was the head of Tesla’s Autopilot team until he reportedly resigned over disagreements about Elon Musk’s push to advertise that the company’s cars would be capable of “full self-driving.” Urmson also tapped Drew Bagnell as a co-founder. Bagnell had been a self-driving engineer at Uber after the tech company poached him from Carnegie Mellon (as part of a much larger raiding of the university’s vaunted robotics division).