Aurora Innovation, Inc. in Automotive Artificial Intelligence

Aurora works with automakers to design and develop a package of sensors, software, and data services the “full stack,” in industry parlance needed to deploy fully autonomous vehicles. The company focuses on Level 4 autonomous systems with an eye toward Level 5. (Level 4 is a designation by SAE International, the automotive engineering association, for autonomous vehicles that take over all driving in certain conditions. In Level 5 autonomy, the vehicle is self-driving in all situations.) “What’s most overlooked is how complicated the problem is,” Urmson says. “There’s a flood of companies that are indicating they’re going to come and solve this problem quickly. We understand where the pitfalls are and how hard this problem really is, and we’re building a company to go solve it for real, over time.”