Aurora’s Sterling Anderson, Uber ATG’s Raquel Urtasun to discuss self-driving cars and AI at TC Sessions

We’re just weeks away from our TC Sessions: Robotics + AI event at UC Berkeley on April 18. Some of the best and brightest minds are joining us for the day-long event, including Marc Raibert, Colin Angle, Melonee Wise and Anthony Levandowski . Last week, we added to the list of marquee guests and announced a panel with roboticist Ken Goldberg, […]

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Transportation Weekly: Waymo unleashes laser bear, Bird spreads its wings, Lyft tightens its belt

Welcome back to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch . This is the fifth edition of our newsletter and we love the reader feedback. Keep it coming. Never heard of TechCrunch’s Transportation Weekly? Catch up here, here and here. As I’ve written before, consider this a soft launch. Follow […]

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Transportation Weekly: Amazon’s secret acquisition and all the AV feels

Welcome to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. I cover all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in the future — whether it’s by bike, bus, scooter, car, train, truck, robotaxi or rocket. Sure, let’s include hyperloop and eVTOLs, or […]

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Waymo CTO on the company’s past, present and what comes next

A decade ago, about a dozen or so engineers gathered at Google’s main Mountain View campus on Charleston Road to work on Project Chauffeur, a secret endeavor housed under the tech giant’s moonshot factory X. Project Chauffeur — popularly know as the “Google self-driving car project” — kicked off in January 2009. It would eventually […]

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Report: Self-driving car startup Aurora is raising capital at a $2B valuation

Early last year, LinkedIn co-founder and prolific venture capital investor Reid Hoffman called Chris Urmson “the Henry Ford of autonomous vehicles (AV).” The vote of confidence and big check from Hoffman, coupled with a team of deeply knowledgable AV entrepreneurs, has catapulted his company, Aurora Innovation, squarely into “unicorn” territory. Aurora, the developer of a full-stack […]

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Save your spot for TechCrunch Robotics+AI 2019

TechCrunch returns to UC Berkeley on April 18th for TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics+AI. The single-day event will feature talks, workshops, demos and plenty of networking opportunities. We added artificial intelligence to the event this year because the technology is so closely tied to the success of robotics and so much more. We have several ways for […]

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China’s Byton is sending its electric SUV prototypes to the U.S.

Byton, the new China-based automaker founded by former BMW and Infiniti executives, has produced the first 10 prototypes of its tech-centric all-electric SUV and some of them will be in the U.S. before the end of the year, company president and co-founder Daniel Kirchert told TechCrunch. Byton plans to produce another 100 prototypes of the SUV, […]

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Aurora hires SpaceX’s Jinnah Hosein, opens SF and Pittsburgh offices

Self-driving technology company Aurora has made some key moves on its leadership team and overall company growth: It’s bringing on SpaceX’s now former head of software engineering, Jinnah Hosein, to lead its own software engineering team in a VP role. The autonomous software provider is also opening up two new offices, including one in San […]

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Aurora raises $90M Series A, adds Reid Hoffman and Mike Volpi to its board

 Self-driving car startup Aurora has raised $90 million in a Series A round, with participation from both Greylock Partners and Index Ventures. The new funding adds to its available cash and will make it possible for the young startup to scale mor…

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Aurora will power Byton EV’s autonomous driving features

 Aurora, the self-driving startup founded by Google self-driving car project alum Chris Urmson, along with Tesla Autopilot developer Sterling Anderson, CMU robotics expert and Uber vet Drew Bagnell, and a team of industry experts, will be making the autonomous smarts for Byton’s forthcoming electric vehicle. Byton, a startup that had a splashy debut at CES earlier this year.… Read More

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Volkswagen and Hyundai team up with Aurora on self-driving

 Aurora, the startup founded by Google self-driving car program and Tesla alum Chris Urmson, has signed up two high-profile automaker partners despite its relative youth – both Volkswagen and Hyundai are planning to incorporate Aurora self-driving technology in production cars by 2021. The Volkswagen is also hoping to put autonomous test cars on the road later this year, in a limited… Read More

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