Aurora Innovation Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Scaling Driverless Trucking with Hirschbach MOU and Hardware Cost Cuts

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: It is now my pleasure to introduce Stacy Feit, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation2: Thanks, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to our first quarter 2026 business review call. We announced our results earlier this afternoon. Our shareholder letter and a presentation to accompany this call are available on our investor relations website at ir.aurora.tech. The shareholder letter was also furnished with our Form 8-K filed today with the SEC. On the call with me today are Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, David Maday, CFO. Chris will provide an update on the progress we have made across the key pillars of our business, David will recap our first quarter financial results. We will then open the call to Q&A. A recording of this conference call will be available on our investor relations website at ir.aurora.tech shortly after this call has ended. I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that during the call, we will be making forward-looking statements.

These statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed, projected, or implied during this call. In particular, those described in our risk factors included in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, and other documents filed with the SEC, as well as the current uncertainty and unpredictability in our business, the markets and economy. Additional information will also be set forth in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. All forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions and beliefs as of the date hereof, Aurora disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law.

Our discussion today may include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from our GAAP results. Information regarding our non-GAAP financial results, including a reconciliation of our historical GAAP to non-GAAP results, may be found in our shareholder letter, which was furnished with our Form 8-K filed today with the SEC and may also be found on our investor relations website. Our discussion today may also include reference to forward-looking free cash flow, a non-GAAP financial measure. To the extent that this forward-looking financial measure is provided, it is presented on a non-GAAP basis without a reconciliation due to the inherent difficulty in forecasting and quantifying certain amounts that are necessary for such reconciliation. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Thanks, Stacy. 2026 is the year Aurora begins to scale. Our strategic investments are fueling the momentum necessary to accelerate our growth and extend our lead in the autonomous trucking market. The start of this year has been a period of disciplined transition, a deliberate buildup before the inflection. Drawing on our deep experience safely integrating the Aurora Driver across multiple platforms, we’re on the cusp of launching our second generation commercial hardware kit on a new fleet of driverless trucks. This program positions us to exit the year with over 200 driverless trucks in operation across the Sun Belt and supports our broader scaling ambitions in 2027 and beyond. In preparation for this imminent launch, our forthcoming software release and commercial hardware kit are engineered specifically to deliver the reliability required as we scale our fleet. This progress is driving significant commercial momentum.

In addition to the Transportation as a Service commitments we already have in place with Hirschbach, we announced last week that they have selected Aurora to scale their autonomous fleet with intent to own and operate 500 trucks through our Driver-as-a-Service business model. We expect to finalize the definitive agreement, which represents a potential multi-year revenue stream in the hundreds of millions of dollars later this year, with truck delivery slated to begin in 2027. As we prepare to scale, we’re seeing continued regulatory momentum with landmark progress at the state level. California has reached a watershed moment, joining the vast majority of states in enabling autonomous trucking. We now project a serviceable addressable market of 60 billion vehicle miles traveled by 2028. Excitingly, California supports a seamless coast-to-coast operating environment.

With the Aurora Driver now sufficiently generalized for us to begin scaling across the Sun Belt aligned with customer demand, we strategically focused our resources on 3 key initiatives, expanding our driverless network, finalizing our latest software release, and validating our 2nd generation commercial hardware kits. These efforts serve as the critical final steps in preparing for the imminent launch of our new driverless truck fleet, transitioning Aurora from a phase of localized operations to one of wide-scale industrial deployment. Our expansion is progressing at an accelerated pace, with our network now encompassing 12 distinct routes. At the end of March, we validated driverless operations on the bi-directional route between Dallas and Laredo within just 6 weeks of initiating supervised autonomous runs. Building on this momentum, we also opened new bi-directional routes between Dallas and Oklahoma City.

In collaboration with Volvo Autonomous Solutions, we have started supervised autonomous deliveries on this route for one of their key customers. We’ve expanded our driverless cohort to seven customers, including transitioning commercial loads with McLane to driverless operations. Our forthcoming software release further increases the Aurora Driver’s reliability in preparation for scaling, including validation of driverless operations in more severe rain, as well as the full spectrum of complex construction scenarios on our highway routes. To complement these advancements, we are augmenting our driverless network to support real-time dynamic rerouting, providing the operational agility required for high-volume commercial service. We’re also in the process of validating our second generation commercial hardware kit on multiple truck platforms through rigorous on-road track and lab testing to prepare for our planned second quarter launch and are seeing impressive performance.

Designed for 1 million miles of operation and with enhanced sensor cleaning capabilities, this kit meaningfully increases the Aurora Driver’s reliability. It also brings exciting performance gains, including a more efficient computer and an extended 1-kilometer range for FirstLight, our proprietary long-range FMCW lidar. This is double the range of the closest FMCW lidar competitor and can give the Aurora Driver more than 34 seconds to react when at highway speeds, setting a new superhuman standard for safety. Importantly, we expect this kit to drive a 50-plus % reduction in Aurora Driver hardware costs, a key lever supporting our break-even gross margin target. While advancing on these fronts, in April, the Aurora Driver surpassed 370,000 driverless miles with a 100% on-time performance and zero Aurora Driver-attributed collisions. Notably, this growth was driven by a very strong utilization with a leaner active fleet.

For example, the driverless trucks we are operating for Werner are already averaging 4,000+ miles per week, which translates to an annual run rate of 225,000+ miles per truck. With the performance we’re seeing, we expect Aurora Driver-powered trucks will be capable of more than doubling utilization and in turn, revenue per truck for our customers. Expanding driverless delivery to and from customers’ facilities will further strengthen the Aurora Driver’s value proposition. We’re continuing to ready Hirschbach, Detmer, and Werner for endpoint operations, including in-yard autonomous operations at their facilities. We currently expect to generate a majority of our 2026 revenue through operations between customer facilities, reflecting our continued focus on increasing commercial value. To ensure seamless end-to-end service, we recently began supervised testing of way station navigation and on-route fueling at truck stops.

Navigating these environments requires many of the same advanced surface street capabilities we have already refined. For example, on the Seven Mile, the Aurora Driver navigates to and from the highway in Houston. The video on page 8 of our presentation demonstrates the Aurora Driver’s proficiency in these complex low-speed settings. To meet customer demand and support our path to scale, we’ve established a robust hardware and vehicle platform roadmap. We’re closing in on the 2Q launch of our second generation commercial hardware kit on a new fleet of trucks based on the International LT series that will enable driverless operations without an observer. With this program, we have strong line of sight to achieving our 2026 scaling goals. We expect this to establish a powerful foundation for 2027, where we plan to launch our Driver-as-a-Service business model.

Looking ahead to 2027, we’ve made exciting progress on our 3rd generation commercial hardware kit that will be manufactured by Aumovio. Together, we started testing initial units. Our engineering team is also working with Aumovio and NVIDIA to develop a first-of-its-kind Super Thor compute configuration, an architecture that integrates 2 NVIDIA DRIVE Thor SoCs into a unified platform optimized to power the Aurora Driver at scale. This approach demonstrates our 3-way collaboration is setting the standard for industrializing autonomous technology. In March, Aumovio broke ground on the expansion of their New Braunfels, Texas facility, where they will produce our 3rd generation hardware kit intended to supply tens of thousands of trucks. Construction of the plant’s expansion is expected to be completed in the 1st quarter of 2027, with start of production for the hardware kits on track to begin in the 2nd half of 2027.

Volvo plans to build hundreds of the Volvo VNL autonomous trucks in 2027 and has already completed several Aurora Driver-powered trucks on their pilot line. For the program based on the International LT truck, our upfitter Roush will begin scaled production later this year. We’re initially establishing the capacity to produce 1,000 trucks per year with potential to increase that capacity. Concurrently, PACCAR and Aurora are jointly defining the path to scale, scalable launch on the third generation Aurora Driver commercial hardware kit integrated with PACCAR’s future autonomy-enabled platform. All of this work is forging the industrial engine that extends our leadership position and supports commercial deployment at significant scale. At Aurora, we’re building a safer, stronger, and more resilient freight ecosystem with our technology for the people who power it.

To back this vision, we recently announced Aurora Works, our commitment to invest in workforce development by establishing educational partnerships and technical training for emerging roles in autonomous trucking. We’re at the center of a new era of logistics that improves road safety, fuels economic growth, and creates new high-skilled American jobs. Autonomous freight represents a step change for what is possible in global logistics. The Aurora Driver moves the industry beyond traditional constraints toward a world of continuous high utilization delivery. With a clear roadmap, deep partnerships, and an accelerating industrial engine, we are well positioned to lead this evolution. The future of freight is on the road and Aurora is setting the pace. With that, I’ll now pass it over to Dave, who will review our financial results.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: Thank you, Chris. Now let’s review our financial results for which we have provided a summary on page 15 of the slide deck for reference. First quarter 2026 revenue totaled $1 million across driverless and vehicle operator supervised commercial loads. Despite leveraging our shared fleet for continued development of new routes and validation of our second generation commercial hardware kit, the Aurora Driver achieved another record number of commercial miles during the quarter, which drove a 10% sequential increase in revenue from the fourth quarter of 2025. First quarter operating loss, including stock-based compensation, totaled $244 million. Excluding stock-based compensation of $46 million, R&D totaled $159 million, SG&A was $34 million, and cost of revenue was $6 million.

We used approximately $159 million in operating cash during the first quarter of 2026, and capital expenditures totaled $25 million. As planned, this cash spend was below our externally communicated quarterly average target. We expect the second quarter cash spend to be above the target range due to the timing of our cash bonus payout, which as we discussed last quarter, we plan to fund with our at-the-market program. We ended the quarter with a very strong balance sheet, including liquidity of nearly $1.3 billion in cash and short-term and long-term investments. During the first quarter, we generated net proceeds of $14 million from the issuance of Class A common stock through our at-the-market program, which we use to fund the tax liability associated with vesting of employee restricted stock units during the quarter.

We continue to expect 2026 revenue of $14 million-$16 million, up 400% year-over-year at the midpoint. Revenue will be back-end loaded, with the fourth quarter projected to contribute over half of full year revenue as we scale driverless operations following the launch of our new fleet. We anticipate exiting the year with more than 200 driverless trucks in operation, which translates to approximately $80 million in revenue on a run rate basis for our Transportation as a Service business. This establishes a powerful foundation for 2027 when we expect the core Driver-as-a-Service model to commence. To support our scaling plan, we continue to expect quarterly cash use of approximately $190 million-$220 million on average throughout 2026.

This includes approximately $150 million in anticipated full year CapEx, primarily attributed to our capacity plan. We continue to expect 2026 to represent peak capital spend and CapEx declining significantly in 2027 as we transition to our Driver-as-a-Service model and Hardware as a Service structure with Aumovio. Our first quarter performance reflects the focused execution and disciplined transition that will define Aurora in 2026. We continue to balance prudent resource management with the strategic investments needed to support large scale industrial deployment. With that, we will now open the call to Q&A.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Our first question is from George Gianarikas with Canaccord Genuity.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Hey, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. So maybe first, you know, in light of the growing commercial momentum that you’re seeing, have you seen any meaningful acceleration and inbound interest from prospective fleet partners? Also, as you’re beginning to scale, how are you navigating price discovery? Has there been any resistance from customers regarding the per mile rate, or is the value currently offsetting any cost concerns? Thank you.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. Thanks, George. Appreciate you. Appreciate the question. We continue to have really exciting conversations with various customers. You know, we’ve talked in the past about each time we kind of check off progress, we see it become more real in the eyes of customers, and that leads to an increase in the conversations we have. We’ve got an exciting funnel, and we’ll share more as we can as we get through that. I don’t think we can talk specifically about pricing on this. Obviously, there’s a lot of competitive elements around that, but we have very, you know, fruitful conversations with folks. You know, of course, they wanna pay nothing for it, and we’d like to charge them more for it. You know, every one of those conversations is, of course, a negotiation.

I don’t know, Dave, if you’d add more.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: Yeah, I think the customers themselves have been giving us really good and direct feedback. At the end of the day, the value proposition that we’re discussing has still resonated quite well. You’re gonna argue a little bit about the fringes.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation1: Yeah

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: growing cost of drivers is undeniable, the indirect costs associated with it. You know, fuel costs are really high right now. We’re providing a 15% reduction on that. That translates to real dollars, right? That’s roughly $0.15-$0.16 per mile in today’s, you know, marketplace. The value proposition does resonate quite well and, you know, we’re confident that we’re gonna be able to grow the business and achieve our profit objectives.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Thank you. Maybe as a follow-up, you know, given your recent autonomous hauls, are you encountering any technical bottlenecks as you transition from pilot to more of a consistent operational cadence? How have your engineering teams mitigated any constraints that have been out there on the system? Thank you.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. There’s nothing that we’re seeing that’s particularly surprising. It’s stuff that’s been in our roadmap for a while. You know, we’re continuing to prove that this new release that is gonna land with second generation hardware really is about making sure that we have a robust platform that’s reliable and meets customer needs. You know, increasing the amount of rain we can handle, dealing with more complicated construction that we need to deal with on freeways. That’s the kind of thing that’s gonna set us up to be able to scale really well.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Thanks.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Thank you.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Our next question is from Scott Group with Wolfe Research.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation1: Hey, thanks. Afternoon, guys. Couple things. Relative to the target of 200 trucks by the end of the year, how many are in operation today? Separately on the Hirschbach MOU, just hoping for a little bit more color, like what needs to happen to convert this from an MOU to a committed contract? Do you have any color on, like, how many of those 500 trucks you expect to deliver in 2027, and how long do you think it takes to get to the full 500?

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. On the 200 trucks, when we talk about 200 trucks, we’re talking about driverless trucks operating by the end of the year. Today, we’re running about a handful of them. Of the vehicles that will make up those 200 trucks that are operating driverlessly, I think we own 25 of them now, and they’re in various stages of upfit and preparation. That’s kind of where we stand on getting to those 200 trucks over the course of the year. You know, we’re doing work in Q2 to prepare Roush Performance to scale, and they’ll really start scaling, getting towards that 20 trucks per week production rate in Q3. With Hirschbach Motor Lines, I don’t know there’s a whole lot we can share there.

We’re really excited about, they’ve been one of our longest term partners and customers. You know, to George’s question earlier about the value customers see, you don’t get a company like Hirschbach signing up for an MOU unless they see real opportunity for it to complement the drivers they have in their fleet today. It’s a 500 truck deal over 2027 and 2028 is our expectation. We expect it to turn into hundreds of millions of miles and hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, so, and we expect to get to closure on that this year.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. Hey, Scott, one other thing on the, one other thing on the 200 trucks, just so there’s no confusion. We already have, you know, commitment and order slots for the, for the entire 200 trucks.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: There is no question about the truck availability. It’s just when we bring them in to start the upfit process and we build out our capacity plan.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation1: Okay, great. Last couple things. David, I think you talked about last quarter, if you get to the $80 million run rate of revenue, that’ll be gross profit breakeven. Is that still the case? On the California front, when do you expect to start operations there?

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: Well, relative to the gross profit break even, that is still our target for sure. The $80 million is one element of that. There are some things that we need to do on the cost side of that equation, which are equally as important, which is part of our plan. We’re still targeting it. It’s not, you know, formal guidance, but we are targeting it, and we are gonna be working really hard to be able to achieve that target. I’ll let Chris talk a little bit about California.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: California, first, we’re really excited that California’s taken a step forward with this. We’ve been in conversation with them literally for years, and we’re just excited to see them kinda put out the regulations and give us certainty on how we can start to build our business there. We don’t have set time for when we’ll begin operating in California. We have to go through the permitting process with them to do that, but the team is already working on that and we’ll share more when we can.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation1: All right. Appreciate the time, guys. Thank you.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: Thank you.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Our next question is from Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation0: Great. Thanks. Afternoon, everyone. Chris, you said in your letter that you and PACCAR are jointly defining the path to scalable launch on their assembly lines. Do you have an understanding? If so, can you tell us kind of what this path looks like from a catalyst or a timing standpoint?

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. I can’t share timing, of course. What I can share is that we’re aligning around the third generation platform or a hardware kit from Aurora that we’re working with Aumovio on. We’ve shared in the past that we expect that to come into production in the back half of 2027. You know, we continue to have conversations with PACCAR. We continue to work with them closely and look forward to offering customers who’d like to have the Aurora Driver on a Peterbilt that option.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation0: Okay. Understood. Maybe kind of on a different topic, obviously, truck rates appear to be going up quite meaningfully, and there are some who think we may be on the cusp of a generational upcycle here. Are you seeing any increased interest from customers or carriers who may be concerned about a driver shortage? Is this an opportunity for you to maybe revise your pricing strategy, or are you just selling this as, "Hey, there’s more savings for your customers if they switch to autonomous in the next few years?

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. I’ll say that, first, I’m not savvy enough to predict exactly what will happen with the market here, but, you know, it does feel like there’s a lot of factors that are contributing to what will be increased freight rates going forward. You know, we’re really focused on delivering value to our customers. We ultimately expect to get paid for that value, if we’re contributing more value, we’d ultimately expect to be compensated for that. Right now, we’re focused on making sure that the folks who’ve been with us as partners and customers and, you know, get an opportunity to benefit from that and build their business. Yeah. Dave, anything that you’d add?

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: No, I think that’s right. I will say that the interest has been picking up a lot over the last six months, frankly. The number of inbounds that we’re getting has been just increasing dramatically, Ravi. We’re very excited about that. Part of it is just we’re out there, and people can see and experience it more than they’ve ever have before. Part of it is the market is starting to have some positive signs that feel like they’re more sustainable, and that has people more interested in thinking about their long term. I think from the pricing side, the one thing that I would say is, we believe that the pricing at that $0.85 plus kind of range will enable us to be very successful, and it will support broad scaled adoption for our customers.

I think we look at it not so much as how would we maximize that next quarter, and I think about it as how will we, you know, build a plan for the next several years. We wanna make sure that we have as equally as much of that long-term focus and support for customer adoption as we can.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation0: Very good. Thank you, Chris and David.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Thank you.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Our next question is from Chris Pierce with Needham & Company.

Chris Pierce, Analyst, Needham & Company: Hey, good afternoon. I just wanna, you know, if you guys could shed some light. You talked about Hirschbach. You know, what are they seeing? Are they seeing something different in terms of absolute number of miles driven, or is it just a unique decision on their end that sort of has them pull the trigger to move from a trial to a truck order? I guess, do you have other partners that you’ve been working with over time that have similar miles, and it just sort of comes down to a unique decision on their end? I just kinda wanna get a sense of what helped them over the, you know, get over the edge there.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. I think first it’s important to recognize that there’s a distribution of customers, right? There’s gonna be folks who are first movers, and there’s gonna be others who are fast followers. You know, we’ve, you know, Hirschbach has had a lot of experience with us. The leadership team there, we’ve been able to build trust with over time. You know, we’re excited for them to pull the trigger. We do expect others will follow. You know, we’ll just continue to demonstrate value. You know, frankly, right now, we’re pretty supply constrained. We look forward to unlocking that supply over the course of this year and certainly in 2027 as we bring the Aumovio hardware kit online.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: The other thing that I would add on Hirschbach, they have been with us for quite some time, and they don’t look at this just as a business decision. They are really looking at this as like, the, in their words, the quality of life investment for their people.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: Right? This is to help support their people and get them to the routes and the working environment that will improve their quality of life while we handle the, quote-unquote, "the less," you know, "desirable," the longer haul routes that keep you away very far. They’ve been very forward leaning on thinking about their drivers’ long-term quality of life. I think that’s something that’s very important to them. Certainly, they care a lot about their drivers.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah.

Chris Pierce, Analyst, Needham & Company: Okay. Just one for Dave. In your, you know, from the desk of the CFO, you talked about in the last hiring up about peak CapEx. I just wanna understand definitionally. I mean, I don’t think of you guys as a heavy CapEx company. I think of you as a heavy R&D company. Are we saying that 2027 is, you know, we’re close to peak R&D, and R&D comes down? I just wanna make sure I’m understanding what line item on the model and what statement to look at.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: No. I think, we have said many times we’re a capital efficient or a capital light business, right? As a transportation as a service business to start, you actually have a little bit more capital than what we believe is gonna be our steady state long-term capital. We do expect our CapEx to go down. Our R&D investments, certainly that’s a larger percentage of our overall expenditures. We are continuing to invest in our R&D to capitalize on the lead, continue to build that advantage, make the Aurora Driver available everywhere. We kinda look at that as more of a steady state kinda number for the foreseeable quarters, whereas we think the CapEx will start to drop down substantially in 2027.

Chris Pierce, Analyst, Needham & Company: Okay. Thanks for clarifying. Good luck.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Thank you.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Our next question is from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer & Co.

Colin Rusch, Analyst, Oppenheimer & Co.: Thanks so much, guys. You know, it’s, you’ve done a very judicious job of, you know, waiting to scale until you guys were ready. Now as you move into this next stage of the organization, I’m just curious about how you think about pacing of this scale-up. Because certainly demand isn’t going to be an issue, but maintaining quality as you move into these higher volumes is critical. Just wanna think about how you’re managing that, how you’re managing supply chain to meet those specs, and how you might end up diversifying some of the supply chain to enable a little bit more resilient supply as you go forward.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: That’s really aligned with our long-term strategy that we’ve talked about for several years now. Thanks for the question. You know, as we went from the initial vehicles that we launched Driverlessly with last year, that was hardware that we had, you know, built in-house. We had sourced all in-house. As we move to the second generation of hardware, there we’re leveraging Fabrinet, you know, the experience they have, the quality process they have, layering on top of that, you know, our quality and sourcing support. We feel good about that.

Of course, as we move to, you know, the back half of 2027, when we expect the hardware kit that we’re developing with Aumovio to come to life, there, of course, we’re leaning into Aumovio and the strength that they have in managing the supply chain and managing quality, being a true scale automotive supplier. That kind of as you think about the hardware side of it, that’s how we’re building that supply chain system. When it comes to the software that operates on board, that’s been a core part of how we’ve thought about this is how do we ensure that the software will generalize safely over time. It’s what leads us to do as much work as we do in testing and validation.

It’s why we’ve said from day one that safety has to be first. We’ve ingrained that into the organization, over, you know, the better part of a decade at this point. That leads to process that we think will scale and ultimately drive safe and reliable outcomes for our customers.

Colin Rusch, Analyst, Oppenheimer & Co.: Thanks. You know, as you guys prioritize ODDs, you know, I’m curious about how much input you’re getting from your customers at this point, or if you’re at a place now where you’re just really driving capabilities, and then selling it to them. You know, are there priorities that they have that can impact some of the sequencing and focus areas for you on an R&D perspective?

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: No, that’s a great question. We continue to want to learn as much as we possibly can from our partners and understand what the source of demand is and where that’s most useful for them. You know, Dave talked about Hirschbach’s focus on supporting their employees and what does that translate into places that are useful for us to drive for them. In terms of the capabilities of the Aurora Driver has to have, we do learn some from our customers, but you know, that we kind of infer ourselves. Where we need to go operate, which lanes we should be opening, that is very much, you know, almost purely driven by customer demand.

Colin Rusch, Analyst, Oppenheimer & Co.: Thanks, guys.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Thank you.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Our next question is from David Vernon with Bernstein.

David Vernon, Analyst, Bernstein: Hey, guys. Thanks for fitting me in here. First question for you, Dave. I noticed the language around sufficient liquidity to get to positive free cash flow in 2028 that was in the 4Q letter is not in a 1Q letter. Was that purposeful? Was that just you’re still on plan? Can you give a kind of comment what the status is on that the cash flow breakeven by 2028?

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: Yeah, it’s still our plan. We believe that we have sufficient liquidity. Nothing has changed in that to get us to a positive free cash flow.

David Vernon, Analyst, Bernstein: Okay, thanks. Then maybe the 4,000 miles per truck per week that you guys are quoting on the utilization that you’re getting out of Werner. Is that the right number to use in terms of a run rate assumption to underpin the $80 million sort of TaaS exit run rate? Then I guess the follow-on to that would be if, you know, that turns into be the right sort of revenue per mile-ish range, you know, how does the DaaS thing compare? You know, is it half? Is it three quarters? Like, anything you can give us relatively on what we should be thinking about plugging into a model around the DaaS versus the TaaS rate would be helpful.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: Yeah, I think for the mileage, I think that’s really gonna vary based on the customer use cases. We’re very confident in our ability to achieve double utilization, and it is really gonna depend on which routes they put them on and the load frequency that they have. Certainly we think this, you know, 200-250 thousand mile range is still a very good source. We’ve used that several years ago, we still think that that’s a good target that any customer can achieve. We think that’s probably good there. In terms of, you know, the pricing dynamics, you know, I can’t get into too many specifics without, you know, kind of comparing individual customers.

What I can tell you is the information that we shared before, relative to anywhere from $1.50 to $2 a mile for TaaS plus, fuel surcharge, and then, on the Driver-as-a-Service, you know, again, our indicative thing, pricing is about $0.85. Again, we think that that’s a pretty good mix, and so you can kind of do the math from there.

David Vernon, Analyst, Bernstein: Okay, thanks.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Thanks, David.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Our next question is from John Saager with Evercore ISI.

John Saager, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Hey, everyone. Thanks for taking my call. I’d hate to continue to dig into the numbers a little bit, but to get to sort of $15 million of revenue, you’re charging somewhere around $2 per mile.

If I’m backing into gross margin breakeven, that means that your cost is something like $1 per mile to operate. Is that a fair way of thinking about it?

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: No.

John Saager, Analyst, Evercore ISI: back your progress like that.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. Yeah. No, no problem. Our cost of goods sold is a measurement that we’re looking at for our gross margin. You will see, if revenue is about 2, that’s our target for our cost of goods sold, is about $2 a mile. That will obviously change when we go to the Driver-as-a-Service. You gotta remember, in our current Transportation as a Service business model, it’s not just the cost of being able to deploy the Aurora Driver, it’s the cost of purchasing the trucks, financing the hardware.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Terminals

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: fuel costs.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Terminal costs.

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: terminals. I think you’ll see us, really targeting roughly that $2 a mile for a breakeven target.

John Saager, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Okay, perfect. As we look out into 2027, at what point do you make that transition to the point where the customers own the trucks? Like, when can you give us any sense of timing on that? Does it all happen at once, or is this sort of a customer-by-customer basis?

David Maday, Chief Financial Officer, Aurora Innovation: It’s not a hard line. We will start the process in 2027, it will really be customer by customer specific. I would also point out that we will still have Transportation-as-a-Service trucks operating for several years, even with customers who have signed up for our additional Driver-as-a-Service contract. We’re going to continue to utilize a small fleet of Transportation-as-a-Service trucks for its life, we will kind of just build upon that going forward. We do expect, you know, again, some general starting. We will start in 2027, there’s no hard line of when it will exactly start. We’re not making some fundamental shift of we will only do Driver-as-a-Service going forward.

It’s important for our customers to support the adoption, to be able to see and experience the Aurora Driver in a scenario where they don’t have to make huge investments until they’ve seen the product work and provide value to them.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: That is something that I think will evolve over time, right? Today, we’re, you know, we’re gonna be the only provider, the first provider of this technology in market. I think there’s gonna be more customer education. The Transportation-as-a-Service, as Dave said, allows us to have this low-friction way for them to get introduced, get used to it. What we do see is that as customers get used to it, you know, they believe in their, you know, the value they provide in owning, operating, maintaining, using these trucks efficiently. That’s a confidence that we don’t think that it’s core to Aurora. We see customers excited to take that on, and we look forward to it.

John Saager, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Okay, great. Thank you so much. Very helpful.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Thank you.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Our next question is from Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs.

Mark Delaney, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Nice to see the improved and new rollouts to new locations. Thanks for all the updates on that. Chris, I was hoping to get your latest thoughts on AI technology and any new innovations that Aurora is looking at. One thing that’s had more discussion in the investment community and tech community recently has been world models, but curious whether it’s that or other newer technologies that you’re observing and anything that could be impactful for Aurora.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: No. We continue to pay attention to what’s happening outside. We’re excited about the models that we’ve been building at Aurora. You know, we continue to be deep believers in verifiable AI. The idea that you would trust one of these giant trucks driving down the road with something where you just kinda hope the output is the right thing given the input, it just doesn’t make sense. You know, we continue to look for ways we can bring those ideas in and fuse them with our approach to ensuring that we can deliver a safe vehicle on the road.

Mark Delaney, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Understood. Thanks. My other question was around the planned start of operations without a driver this quarter. Maybe just speak a bit more, if you could, please, around what still needs to happen for that to materialize. Is it additional testing and validation or anything else that may still be left in order to meet that timeline? Thank you.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: It’s really, you know, imminent. We’re excited about the progress we’re making. It’s predominantly testing and validation at this point. We’re continuing to look forward to having them on the road in Q2.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Our next question is from Ken Hoexter with Bank of America.

Ken Hoexter, Analyst, Bank of America: Hey. Great. Good afternoon, Chris and Dave. Earlier you talked about some of the new routes going from Dallas to Laredo, Dallas, Oklahoma City. For the 200 trucks by year-end, can you talk to about how many total lanes would that encompass? What’s the expansion target? How many different customers are part of that 200 trucks? Are you focused on the existing customers? Do you start talking about new stickers on the trucks? Thanks.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. For the second question first, we expect there to be many new stickers on the trucks by the end of the year. You know, we continue to want to support and ensure that the folks who’ve been with us early on, are able to benefit from it and grow their businesses. You know, we appreciate the trust they’ve put in us. We aspire to have the Aurora Driver on, you know, every truck ultimately. We’re excited to have new customers come in and grow with them. On the lanes front, it’s really gonna be driven by customer interest and demand and where it makes sense for those customers to have the trucks operating. We expect it to span across the Sun Belt, as we have said for some time.

The specific lanes and lane count will really be dictated by that. That’s what’s great, is that we’re moving in the direction with our ability to unlock new lanes, that it’s a comparatively, you know, the complexity and difficulty of making that happen has come down dramatically. We can be much more responsive and reactive to where customers want us to operate.

Ken Hoexter, Analyst, Bank of America: Great. Makes a lot of sense. If I can get a follow-up then on the routes, right?

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Sure.

Ken Hoexter, Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe talk about how much of that is, I don’t know, end-to-end versus drop and hook yards or maybe just understanding the last mile at this point. And then on the production, if you’re targeting 200, you know, or 20 trucks a week at this point, by year-end, how much can that scale into 2027 on both the truck manufacturing and the Aumovio side?

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Okay. And maybe let me make sure what we mean by end-to-end. End-to-end means going from a customer site to a customer site, generally a distribution center or some kind to a customer distribution center or terminal. We’re not talking about going to the Safeway or, you know, the restaurant. We expect by the end of the year that the miles we drive are predominantly going between customer endpoints. That’s our expectation. We think that is the right way to deliver the product. We think it’s valuable to the customer. We’re looking forward to that. As we mentioned, we’re already doing the work with customers today with Werner, Hirschbach, and others at that mart in particular, to open up their endpoints and operate those robustly.

I feel like there was a second half of your question there that I lost somewhere. I apologize.

Ken Hoexter, Analyst, Bank of America: Just the second was just back to the production, right? You talked about 20 trucks a week and kind of thoughts on scalability to 27.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah. We’re starting by setting Roush up with the bandwidth to be able to produce 1,000 trucks a year. As we go into 2027, as we see, you know, the demand for that, we can increase that scale further. We really see this as a complement to the other programs we’re running with Volvo and Peterbilt PACCAR. You know, it’s a third option relative to those two.

Ken Hoexter, Analyst, Bank of America: Wonderful. Thanks a lot. Thanks for the time.

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO, Aurora Innovation: Thank you.

Paul, Moderator, Aurora Innovation: Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions today. This concludes our today’s presentation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you again for your participation.