Aurora s Chris Urmson on why self-driving trucks are finally ready to scale
The story
Self-driving has been almost here for over a decade. But somewhere between DARPA challenges and a handful of driverless trucks hauling freight between Dallas and Houston, Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson’s story changed. The self-driving truck company started commercial driverless operations last April and is now scaling from a handful of trucks to hundreds this year. On this episode of Tech
From the source
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Aurora Chris Urmson on why self-driving trucks are finally ready to scale Rebecca Bellan , Theresa Loconsolo May 7, 2026 Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Self-driving has been almost here for over a decade. But somewhere between DARPA challenges and a handful of driverless trucks hauling freight between Dallas and Houston, Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson ’s story changed. The self-driving truck company started commercial driverless operations last April and is now scaling from a handful of trucks to hundreds this year.
On this episode of TechCrunch Equity podcast, we re bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Urmson at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The pair dug into the long road from lab to highway and how physical AI differs from the LLM boom everyone else is chasing.
Who and what
Key names and topics in this story: Aurora, Chris Urmson.
Where to follow next
- Read the full piece at techcrunch.com
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