Aurora Innovation (AUR) Evercore ISI's Autonomous, ADAS & AI Forum summary

Strategic vision and business model

• Focused on delivering safe, scalable autonomous trucking, with a mission to broadly deploy self-driving technology across the U.S. by 2030.

• Current operations are driverless on the Dallas-Houston lane, with plans to expand throughout the Sun Belt by end of 2025 and most of the U.S. by 2030.

• Transitioning to a driver-as-a-service model by 2027, leveraging partnerships with OEMs like PACCAR, Volvo, and hardware partner Aumovio.

• Hardware-as-a-service model will allow for cost-per-mile billing, aligning incentives across the value chain.

• Long-term integration with human-driven fleets and customer networks is a key enabler for adoption.

Operational milestones and technology roadmap

• Surpassed 50,000 driverless miles and expanding to new lanes, including Fort Worth to El Paso and Phoenix.

• 2025 goals: increase daily driverless miles, improve product capability (nighttime, rain, heavy wind), and unlock additional routes.

• 2026: scale to hundreds of trucks with second-generation hardware; 2027: thousands of trucks and third-generation hardware.

• By 2028, targeting a $50 billion serviceable addressable market (SAM), focusing on routes over 100 miles and expanding beyond the Sun Belt.

• Endpoints (distribution centers, warehouses) will become the primary mode of distribution, with customer adoption driven by reliability and safety.

Financial position and growth targets

• Maintains $1.3 billion in liquidity as of Q2, sufficient runway through Q2 2027.

• Expects to achieve positive free cash flow in 2028, with initial targets of $2–3 billion in revenue from the $50 billion SAM.

• Customers prefer asset ownership and operational flexibility, with AV trucks expected to operate 200,000–250,000+ miles per year.

• Fundraising remains opportunistic to ensure long-term stability for partners, customers, and employees.