news

Amazon invests in autonomous driving technology company

With its investment in Aurora, the online retailing giant becomes the latest tech company to invest in self-driving vehicle technology.


Aurora, a startup focused solely on self-driving vehicle technology, has secured over US$530 million ($750 million) in Series B funding.

This round of funding is led by venture capital firm Sequoia, Amazon, and T Rowe Price Associates, an asset management company.

Thanks to this latest round of investment Sequoia gains a seat on Aurora's board. According to the Aurora, Amazon will be tapped for its "unique expertise, capabilities, and perspective".

Although Amazon is most famous as an online retailer, and holds a dominant position in many western markets, it actually makes most of its profit from its cloud computing services division.

Aurora was co-founded in 2016 by Chris Urmson, who was, from 2009 to 2006, in charge of Google's self-driving car project, which later became Waymo.

The other two co-founders are Sterling Anderson, who was previously the program lead for the Tesla Model X and later the company's Autopilot assisted driving suite, and Drew Bagnell, who was an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute and worked on Uber's self-driving car development team.

Chat with us!







Chat with Agent