Business as Usual: Aurora Details Uber ATG Acquisition

 

Transcription: 

Good afternoon, everyone. This is Audrey Russo. And it is not yet Hump Day. But some people tell me that there's going to be a storm arriving here in Pittsburgh. So we're sort of excited about that happy to have a little bit of change of scenery, as most of us are hunkered down, I'm thrilled to be here. And I'm also thrilled that we're continuing to do business as usual and bring amazing guests to all of you each and every day. Jonathan kersting, is with us today, as always, and he's vice president of all things meaning and marketing. And you might read a little bit about Jonathan, just recently on our get PGH. Micro site, because there's more to Jonathan than just the tech Council and he's a serious cyclist, you might get a chance to know a little bit about the man behind the cycle. And the work that he's done. I just want to do a little plug get PGH is a new microsite that we're telling stories about. So we are thrilled to have our guests here. This is actually we're sort of like Saturday live, and we probably need to give him something. But this is his third appearance on our show. And each and every time it is absolutely timely. And it's absolutely lively. So we're pretty thrilled about now, what is going on at Aurora and I will introduce our guest in one moment, I would like to give a shout out to Huntington bank, they've been partners with us right from the onset. And as we get into this next iteration of the cares Act, which I know is being discussed in Washington, I'm sure they'll be very, very active in making sure that businesses around our region have access to what they need to continue to thrive. And also I want to give some recognition to our wholly owned subsidiary, which is 40 by 80. That's the longitude and latitude of Pittsburgh. And that is where the tech council leads many of our efforts to support entrepreneurship and the acceleration of workforce development across our region. So we've muted your mics. And we've muted your mics on purpose, because we don't really want to hear what's in the background of all of your homes and offices. And but we consider eight be considerate to our guest. And in addition, we have a chat section, Jonathan will keep his eyes peeled on the chat section. And we will hopefully have enough time to answer questions and engage with the audience because that's really our intent today, to have a casual conversation with some of the bright minds that are leaving work here across our region. So I'm really excited to have Aurora representation, the Vice President of government relations and government affairs on Aurora, he is a friend of the tech community. And he is a transplant that actually feels like a native pittsburgher. And he has exercised his civic muscle in many, many ways that I really want to shine the light on. So we're going to talk about a war. But I want to bring on Geraldo in Terry Otto, and he is joining us from his own home office. And I'm thrilled to have him here for a third time, we will send you a Pittsburgh tech council t shirt. And I will have it personally delivered to your home because it's where like Saturday Night Live now people count how many times they come back on the show. So thank you, Geraldo, thank you so much for being here. And I know you've been through so much over the last few weeks, if not months, I'm sure behind the scenes. But before we talk about the company, let's talk about you. And let's just talk about, you know, the role that you have, and your relocation here to Pittsburgh. So well.

Thanks, Audrey. Oh, it's always a pleasure to be here and appreciate all the work that you guys do. I'm excited to be chatting with you guys. So yeah, my family and I recently moved up to Pittsburgh last summer, and we have been having the time of our lives. The one complaint that my kids have is that I promised them that we would be moving here and they would have a lot of snow. And so far over the last 18 months Pittsburgh has not yet delivered. But I know we went sledding last weekend or last week when we had snow a few a few weeks ago. And then hopefully we're going out there again tomorrow.

Well, I think they will be pleased by tomorrow. And maybe this will be a winter where we'll see some of that activity. And

we hope so because up until now Mother Nature has proven me a liar.

So just tell us real quickly. What's it been like? What surprised you about Pittsburgh? I mean, I think if an officer

has an incredible opportunity to tell a story, right? Like, I there's so many other cities that you kind of know what to expect when you're coming into them. And I think Pittsburgh, it's blown all my expectations out of the water. Right. And partially it's because I didn't have any. Like, I didn't know what Oh, wow. And I didn't I didn't know and I knew a lot about the history and the incredible work that's been happening here obviously knew about CMU and the universities and the healthcare system. But from a tech community perspective, like it's incredible to see the growth that the tech community has seen here in the last 10 years and to see how the culture of the city is changing as a result of it. So we have been really, really impressed with the community. And we're excited to be to call this home and the kids love it. And my wife and I love it. And we're hoping to be able to continue to get more and more ingrained into the community.

It's great. It's great. You've been a great, you really, I mentioned earlier about your civic muscle. And we'll get into that in a minute. But let's just talk about, you know, the Uber acquisition, right? Well, before we get into the Uber acquisition, let's

talk about

Aurora. Sure, talk about the company, give us a little bit of the history people know you've been in the news, etc. But really talk about the mission and vision and the work that you that your company does.

Yeah, so our mission is to deliver the benefits of self driving technology safely, quickly. And broadly. Right, we were we were founded from the very beginning here in Pittsburgh, right. So we were a dual headquartered company with some of our employees in California in Palo Alto, soon to be Mountain View. And then the rest of the employees that are here in Pittsburgh, and tour our founders came out of CMU. So we have really strong roots here in Pittsburgh, both Chris Urmson and Drew bagno have their roots here in the community and literally came out of Pittsburgh, right. So our commitment here has been strong from the very beginning. You know, as far as a business model for we, we've always said that our business model is one of partnerships, right? Like we want to be best in class and what we know best. And for us, it's the technology, right? Like we believe that the Aurora driver is going to be the safest driver that we're going to be able to deploy broadly. But we're going to do that through our partnerships. And I think that this acquisition that we're going to talk about is a testament on how that business model is going to play out. Right? Like we want to identify who are the best in class business partners, when it comes to passenger mobility, when it comes to trucking when it comes to manufacturing, and go and partner with them to then deploy the road driver as a result of those partnerships.

Wow. So so so then let's jump in then. So there's this acquisition of Uber, the ATG that's been here, and you know, to be honest, that their presence and coming to Pittsburgh was a deep inflection point, in a positive way, in terms of the way they planted themselves in the community and the work that they were doing. So there, there probably are, some people are saying, oh, what does that mean, they, you know, their name really did a lot for us. And they really attract the talent from all around the world that changed the conversation about Pittsburgh in terms of autonomy, etc, I, you know, look, the world changes, life changes, and we're moving at the speed of light. So we all need to understand that these kinds of changes are going to occur. I look at this as a positive thing. But I what we would like to hear more from you. So what you know, what do you think that means? It's early in the game right now. Yeah. And that, you know, Pittsburgh has positioned itself

as the epicenter of self driving technology, right? Like you, you have so many companies that are here, you have this incredible talent pool, that's coming out of the higher education institutions that are here in the city. And there's no reason why that cannot continue to grow here in the community. One of the things that probably excites us more than anything else about this acquisition of ATG is that we already have a strong presence here as a company as Aurora. And to be able to only increase that that that presence here in the community by bringing the ATG team into the Aurora family, it just continues to solidify the fact that Pittsburgh is doing incredible things on this front, you know, our relationship with the city with the state, and what this means for the future of the technology sector here and what it means for for our ability to continue to grow and to continue to invest. It's very, very real. And so for us, that's part of the exciting narrative is that that we are a Pittsburgh company. And we feel that this is one of our headquarters, and the fact that we get to bring this incredible team into the fold.

Yeah, oh, you can you can feel that it for those of you that didn't have a chance to hear Chris Urmson, who we actually did an interview with you would it would be well worth it to go back and listen to him, because it was interesting to see to see the actual interconnections and sort of his own passion as a leader for making sure that there is presence in Pittsburgh, and that was even before the announcement of Uber. You know, I personally see that the that we were planting the roots here was fabulous. I mentioned that that earlier. There is some I'm sure that there is some, you know, concern, and we'll and we'll get to that. But I don't want to make up any kinds of, you know, imaginary kinds of comments, because we don't know what happens. But what do you think some of the early steps of the integration are going to look like that for those of us that are outside of work of Aurora?

We'll start, no, look, the integration is going to be done in a really thoughtful way when it was an incredibly talented tech team. Right? Like the advantage of being able to bring this team like we would never have gone after the ATG acquisition. If it wasn't for the technology and the talent that they have. They're like they've been building this incredible program. They have a strong presence here. They're they're really leading on so many different fronts that we have an opportunity to bring that Team into the fold and go through that integration process, we've already announced, we're going to take a majority of all those employees, our ATG team and bring them into the fold on Aurora across their different offices, right, they have a really strong presence here. But they also have offices throughout the country. And what part of what that allows us to continue to develop and to continue to deploy the Aurora driver more broadly, right part of our mission is that we're going to do this safely, quickly and broadly. So in line with the broadly component of the mission, by bringing in a team, like ATG, it's going to give us access to these other communities in this other talent that they have throughout the country, at Target to allow us to continue to develop that driver and to be best in class of what we do

in what you do in terms of you know, safety and autonomy can transcend a lot of markets. It's not necessarily just in the vehicle market.

So no, absolutely right. Like that's part of the partnership and part of the model of our rora, we talked about how we want to be a platform agnostic company, right? Like we are not, we want to identify who is the auto manufacturer that is best in class and what they do, who's the trucking manufacturer, and the idea for it from our perspective, and how we deploy this technology is that we're going to go with trucking first, which we've already announced that we're continuing to make progress with that we announced earlier this summer, that we're going to have the the our trucking presence in Texas, and then we're going to be doing some of that testing there. And that is already on the road. And we're already making progress on that, that is going to be on delivery, and then passenger mobility. So for us, we're not constraining ourselves to one business model.

But it's because

of that partnership model because of how how we identify who our partners are, that that is how we're going to be able to deploy that drive. And one of the key things about this deal that we haven't yet covered is its two components, right? There's the acquisition of the ATG team. But there's also a commercial deal that is a part of this, that is going to allow us to have access and have a strategic relationship with Uber to be able to deploy this technology more broadly in the years to come.

So wait, so are there other pieces of the acquisition that you want to talk about? I don't want to skim over them?

No. So I would say there's those are the three components right there. There's the acquisition of the team, there's the commercial deal, that gives us a greater access and a strategic relationship with the world's largest ride hailing company. And then there's the investment. Right, so that part of it and a lot of the questions that we get is what is our runway look like? Right? How do we continue to grow. And I can tell you several things, I can tell you, number one, our board is so excited about this opportunity, and they're committed, and they're in it for the long haul. And number two, Uber has decided that Aurora is the company that's going to be able to do this and to be able to deploy self driving technology. So not only are we taking on their team, but they're so committed to the mission to the work that the work that we're doing, that they're investing $400 million into the company and that their CEO, Dora is going to be joining our board.

You know, I saw that and the investment at any, what does that mean in terms of the investment that they're going to work alongside of Aurora in terms of investing in r&d?

I think the investment is a testament to the fact that they believe that we are going to be able to deploy this technology, right. And you mentioned safety or safety earlier, that is a key part of the work that we are doing, right, the message that we are taking to every community across the country, to the federal to the state to the local government, is that we want to do this in as safe as possible as we can. You know, it is it is our team's goal. And I and I use that broadly, because it's from a communications perspective, from a government affairs perspective. Whenever somebody thinks about a company that is doing this safely, we want them to think about Aurora, like we want to earn the public's trust to be able to deploy this technology. And the only way we're going to be doing we're going to be able to do that is through these partnerships, where we're able to go out there and tell that story.

Well, you know, the cool thing about about Aurora to me is that we're building on our regional assets here. And their regional assets are like more crystallized in terms of this acquisition and what you're talking about. So safety, logistics, trucking, mobility, those are things that we have deep roots here, and you see the proliferation of startups that are actually addressing that those market sectors. So I'm really excited by that because that is when know that an economy starts to gain traction.

When I would go one step further, though, right? Like the it's not just about the startup ecosystem. And it's not just about the technology ecosystem, but think about the entire transportation ecosystem, right? It's a multi trillion dollar industry. And here in Pennsylvania, right, we've talked to dairy farmers. And one of the things that dairy farmers will talk about is how this technology will give them access to markets that maybe they don't have access to today because of what it takes for them to move their product from one place to another. So imagine what autonomous trucking can do to some of these farmers that are trying to get these perishable products across the country when all of a sudden they have access to markets that today they can't access. And that's the incredible power of what this technology can do.

That's really exciting. And that's, and that plays well to Pennsylvania as well, because that's clearly

a huge history, right? Like, it's not, it's not just about today's world, but it is also about that old world, right? And how is it that we, that we incorporate this technology to make sure that that everybody feels the impact of it again, I come back to that broadly component, right, we want, we want the person with the disability to be able to make their life easier. And to go from point A to point B, we want to help the senior citizen who can't get you know, who loses their mobility, and we can give that back to them. We want to help the single parent who has to take three different bus routes to get to work if we can give them some of that time back with their family. But on the on the side of the movement of goods, imagine what it means during crises and during hurricanes and for businesses that are trying to move their product, if we can do that more efficiently, and be able to get their product there faster.

Yeah, I mean, that's quite a bold vision. And I did joke with Chris saying, since we have all those amenities, and those resources here, just just make Pittsburgh The only headquarters, I wouldn't be doing my job. If I didn't say that.

Know your guy, I'm glad you put Chris on the spot,

I put him on the spot. And he has deep love for Pittsburgh. So you know, I'm going to be on him nonstop. So thank you for sharing that in terms of the integration, it will stay it will stay close to you too. So if there are people that are listening here and think that they have some sort of solution or some sort of partnership, and that they are hearing you right now, how could they get in touch would they get in touch with you what might be some great way not to inundate you. But there is no

problem with inundating me right like I'm, I'm not afraid to share my email address, by all means I'm happy to give it on here, put it in the chat room, if folks want to reach out and learn more or figure out a way to connect with us, I'm more than happy to do so. That's great.

So talk about how and where you see additional opportunities across our ecosystem, you've had a good seat at the table in terms of understanding things. So some of you might not know and i'll repeat earlier in the in the pandemic, really early on, Aurora stepped up and said, we really need to make sure that we're not leaving our students who are in public schools behind and that they were adamant about saying that we need to make sure that everyone has a Chromebook, everyone has access to Wi Fi everyone has access, because we can see right away when the school shut down, that there was a drastic disconnect. And it was with a roars leadership that they said let's convene. And let's convene. And I would like you to just talk about that a little bit. Because I think your civic muscle has really made a difference and made many of us just wake up and say we really do need to do more. And I just want to applaud auroras efforts in the work with neighborhood allies and Google and the tech Council. So can you talk about like what happened? You know, the origins of that? And then, you know, where are we today? And yeah,

thank you, right, thank you for your partnership, thank you for your willingness to work with us. And thanks to all the different partners and all the different members of the Technology Council who stepped up and who contributed, right. But that began as a as a

grand idea.

And we ended up raising over $400,000 to get you know, laptops in the hands of these kids, and we made a real difference in their lives. Right. I think, if I can take one step backwards, I think one of the things that we as a tech community need to think more about is how and I think this is honestly for everybody in general. But I think from a tech community, in particular, it's about empathy. And that's one of the things that that I tend to talk a lot about is I think it's really important for us in the tech community to be more empathetic. The reality is, is that most of us are building incredibly transformational and incredibly disruptive technologies. And sometimes we are so focused that and what we are doing that is ultimately good, right? And we are committed and there's no doubt that what so many of us are doing is incredible, and it's going to improve people's lives. But it's also going to change people's lives. And at times, it's going to make them uncomfortable. Right. So I think we need to be more empathetic to understand, okay, how is it that people are reacting to this and bring them into the fold, right, lift that veil and have them understand how it is that we approaches and being engaged in our communities. We talk about it really openly that part of our commitment is to earn people's trust. And we're going to do that by partnering with the Technology Council by partnering with the city with the state. It's not it's not lipstick on a pig, right? Like this is real, like we want to have a in depth relationship that is based on trust. And that takes time to develop. And it's an investment that we all need to make from a tech community. But I think the more that the tech community comes together and engages with the public and engages with government, the more successful that we will all be in the long term.

And I think what it really reiterated for me is that, that the tech community really are, you know, these companies really are the Titans. They're just, they're not at the point where they've been mature enough to understand what responsibilities come with being Titans. And it's a new world. It's a new world of giving and flexing, your engagement. And I think that what the leadership yielded as a result of trying to go after getting kids what they needed, as people started talking about, how do we give back? How do we contribute? How do we make a difference, which included real cash being raised, for example, for the food bank, for flexing their muscles on 412, Food Rescue, and I can go on and on. So I think but I I applaud that. And I know that with your leadership in, you know, Community Affairs and government relations, that you will continue to push, you know, the gas pedal, so to speak, whether it's autonomous, or not, to make sure that we're civically minded. So the importance of can you talk about how and where you see the the technologies in terms of interaction? Are we ready? Are we already using some of this technology that we don't know about? So are there things that you can peel back?

Yeah. So you know, this is actually a question we get a lot from regulators right terminology, and how are we talking about this technology really matters, right? Like, there's a big difference between Driver Assist, and full self driving. So I think there are components of what we do that are already being deployed. But today, a fully self driving car is not available in the market, you cannot go in buy in fully self driving car, right, you can buy from sorry, what can you buy, you can buy cars that have really good Driver Assist systems, but in every single car that's available today on the market, the human driver is the redundancy, right? Like if something goes wrong, it is the expectation that the human driver can take over the vehicle and get it to safety. If you read through the manuals, if you look at all of these incredible Driver Assist systems that are out there, the redundancy in the backup system is always going to be the human driver, what we are building and what a lot of the other autonomous companies are building on that level four and five technology that does not require human driver to be in the car at all right, that the redundancy is built into the systems. And so that is the difference. And so when we go and talk to the public, and we talk to the regulators, you know, we have to dispel some of this notion that self driving cars are already on the road today. Because the reality is that they're not really even for us, as we are testing on the public roads here in Pittsburgh, we have two safety drivers in all of our cars at all times when they're in autonomy. And that is because safety is such a key component of what we're doing.

So that Yeah, that makes me jump into the next question. And that's about public policy. Sure,

our state and federal policymakers keeping up with the advancements here, and how I mean, it's got to be more than a full time job and a team of people to make sure that everything that you've just articulated is embedded into strategy. And politics. I mean, we this is our cheesy line is, you know, we're getting to write the rules of the road. And we're getting to work with government to figure out exactly what that has to look like. And it comes at all different levels, right? Like there's, there's the federal government has jurisdiction over some things, state government has jurisdiction over the local. So we work with all levels of government to really understand, you know, what are their goals? What is it that they're trying to accomplish? How is it that we fold and provide that value to them, while at the same time making sure that we're pursuing policy that is tech neutral and platform agnostic? Right? Like, we don't believe that government should be picking winners and losers when it comes to business? Right. And so from our perspective, it's about working with government to figure out how is it that we create a level playing field for the industry, to allow us to deploy in these communities and go beyond testing, right, like in a lot of places, Pennsylvania included, you can test but you cannot get deploy this technology on the road, once you can show that our technology safer than a human driver. You're seeing some of this in California, right, where a lot of the testing is happening now. But when the when it comes to deployment, folks are going to states, like Texas, in Arizona, and in some cases, Florida without the ability to deploy is there. So one of the conversations that we're having with folks today across the country, is we need to go beyond testing and start to create that path to commercialization that's going to allow us to deploy that technology in our communities.

So do you think that the public has post traumatic stress since the Arizona incident that occurred? Do you think that there's just like, little moments that we're holding on to that we can't really, that we're not educated enough about?

I think that there's a lot of education that has to happen on both ends? Right. And I think for us, for example, as an industry impresses that company, we're constantly looking for opportunities where we can learn from the public. I'll give you a perfect example. We're partnering with bike PGH to be able to better understand how it is that that bike interact with our vehicles, and our vehicle interacts with bicyclists. Like we can do the same thing with motorcycles, right? So there's a lot of learning that has to still occur within the industry. And we're looking for partners that can do that with us. But it's also about working with the public and educating them on what is available, what is not available, how is it that these cars are going to interact? And really bringing them into the fold?

And people remain scared? So that, you know, I mean, that's, that's really just part of what you need to shift. Are there things that we could be doing and should be doing in the city of Pittsburgh to be more helpful?

I think having folks fully understand that this isn't something that's just going to come here tomorrow, and all of a sudden, you're going to have self driving cars all over the city, right? Like that's, it's going to be very gradual. You know, I've heard Chris say, you know, the average age of the US car fleet, I believe, is about 12 years old, right? And so in order to like, if you were to think about if a self drive tomorrow, only self driving cars were to be sold, it would still take 12 years to flip all cars across the country minimum, right? So it's not when folks I think, think about this technology, what they're really asking is, well, when can I have a self driving cars, right? When will I own a self driving car. And it may not be that you own a self driving car, it may be that you have access to a self driving car, it may be that you have access to goods that were on a self driving truck, or it may be that you have access to a fleet of self driving cars. So part of what everybody's still trying to figure out is those business models, I think we will all benefit from self driving technology. But the question that most folks are really asking themselves is, when do I get to have my own personal self driving car, and that may not be the world that we end up in? Right? It might be a variation of all of those other different business models. But what I can say is that I think we will all benefit from having safer streets, right, and be able to better use our resources more efficiently when we have self driving technology out there.

And I definitely agree with that. And I and I like that you're focusing on those people who actually get left behind in this world of mobility. And there, there are a lot of people that get left behind. And we don't really talk about that.

And for us, it's

really important that folks have access to this technology, right? Like it's not, it's not just about having somebody send a car to go run an errand for them. But we believe that the impact of this technology is very real and transformative to some folks who don't have the options that we do. And so how do we make sure that this technology is going to be accessible to all? That's great.

So Are you hiring? What's going on?

We are we're continuing to hire. We know how I'm sorry.

You know what you're hiring for?

I think it's across the board. Right? I think there's marketing roles. I think there's communications, there's operations, there's engineering roles, like we are continuing to hire, we're continuing to grow. In fact, during the pandemic, we've hired, I believe, over 200 people from the time that we shut down as a company, not just here in Pittsburgh, but as a company, over 200 people have been hired since the pandemic first began.

So how large is the company in terms of, of people,

and we are now over 600 people,

you're now over 600 people and you expect growth next year,

we will continue to grow, right? That does not include the ATG team. So of course, there's going to be the integration of the ATG team into that number. And then yeah, we were going to continue to hire and continue to grow, you know, ultimately, the talent that we're bringing in is what's gonna what's gonna make us that was going to continue to allow us to remain best in class, and to continue to develop this driver and be able to deploy it more quickly.

Well, listen, I am always thrilled to catch up with you. I'm sure our listeners are as well that you are at the next what I would call autonomy 2.0, the next version of what's going to be happening in this region. And I appreciate the vision that that you have, and that the muscle that you actually exhibit in our community. All of us should take that as a great role modeling. Great. Well, we appreciate it. Thank

you guys for the great year and a great partnership. And we hope everyone that

was listening had Happy Holidays. And that it snows. Yeah. Make sure that he is not lying to his children about moving here from Austin. And I just read I think we're gonna have a snowstorm.

Well, that's the plan. That's the hope.

So he put his email out there. He also there's a war of careers that's in there. And there's going to be lots and lots of opportunities and discussions in the month ahead. So everyone stay safe. What do we have for the rest of the week, Jonathan?

Well, tomorrow we have Aaron Watson stopping by from hyper creative to talk about his pivot that he made his as he was the finalists for our top pivot at Tech 50 this year and also some tips and tricks with LinkedIn and YouTube. So Aaron's always a great guy to talk to looking forward in tomorrow.

Okay, well, thanks, everyone. Stay safe. Thanks for Ardo.

You guys

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