Aurora Innovation plans to scale production to 20 driverless trucks per week in Q4 2026, backed by second-generation hardware that management expects will cut unit costs by more than 50%1. The company currently has 20 driverless trucks on the road and plans to grow that fleet to 200 by the end of this year2.
Chris Urmson, Aurora founder and CEO, told CNBC that the company is targeting positive free cash flow by 2028, driven by a substantial increase in the number of autonomous trucks deployed. Aurora lost more than $800 million in 2025, and its current revenue base sits at roughly $5 million.
Routes and operating model
Aurora is running fully autonomous semitrucks on Interstate 45 between Houston and Dallas and on I-20 between Fort Worth and El Paso, two of the busiest trucking corridors in the country. "It's using lasers, radar, and cameras to look all around it and see the other cars, see the other trucks on the road, and figure out how to drive safely," Urmson said during a three-hour ride in an Aurora cab with CNBC.
The company says an autonomous truck can operate more efficiently and at a lower cost than a human-driven semi. Bank of America analyst Ravi Shanker estimated that Aurora's services will cost about $0.85 per mile, compared with approximately $1.30 per mile for human driver wages and benefits before indirect labor costs. Shanker estimated that an autonomous fleet should be nearly 7.5 times as profitable as a human-driven fleet. Autonomous trucks have the potential to operate up to 20 hours a day.
Platform shift and partnerships
Aurora expects to transition from a transportation-as-a-service model toward a driver-as-a-service model by the end of 2027, in which customers pay by the mile driven. The shift is backed by trucking partners including PACCAR, Volvo, and International, creating a platform-like structure where hardware, software, and manufacturing partners share fixed development costs across a larger installed base.
The company has logged more than 440,000 miles since it began testing its autonomous driving technology on public roads in 2022 and put the technology through 15 million tests before deploying it. The Department of Transportation estimates approximately 3.5 million Class 8 semitrucks operate on U.S. roads.
Analyst projections cited by Simply Wall St. place Aurora's revenue at roughly $1.2 billion by 2029, with the most optimistic analysts assuming revenue could reach about $1.4 billion and earnings of roughly $168.8 million that year. The company's cash runway currently extends into the second half of 2027.
ANALYSIS The gap between Aurora's current 20-truck fleet and its target of 20 trucks produced per week represents a steep manufacturing ramp, one that hinges on the second-generation hardware delivering the promised cost reductions at scale.