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Aurora Innovation announcing a long-term deal with Nvidia, which sent that stock surging on Tuesday. That deal also including German company Continental to deploy driverless trucks with more companies betting that the market for autonomous vehicles will grow rapidly in the coming years. For more on on this, we're going to bring in Aurora CEO Chris Urmson. Chris, it is good to see you. So, let's start with that news, Chris, cuz you made headlines there partnering with Nvidia, Continental to deploy driverless trucks at scale. Walk us through this news, Chris. What What does this new partnership mean for your company?

Oh, it's great news, and first, thanks for having me. So, for us, we're in the business of making trucks to drive themselves. And we're going to have trucks on the road operating without people later this year in April. And this is really about how do we get to scale and be able to put it go from tens to hundreds to thousands and tens of thousands of trucks.

And so how does this help you do that, Chris?

Well, Nvidia, as you know, is one of the leaders in making artificial intelligence chips. They're part of the the hardware that goes into our systems when they're driving on the road. The partnership we have is really this unique one with Continental, where Continental is developing the hardware kit for us. They know how to make things at massive scale. They know how to make it for the automotive market. Uh, Nvidia provides a really critical part of our system, the the processor that our algorithms run on. So together, we're able to actually go and have a huge impact in proving safety on America's roads, making it easier to get goods from one place to another and really helping the economy grow.

And is that the ultimate goal of the technology there, Chris? Is it Is it twofold? Is it to improve safety, as you see, and also to to move goods more efficiently, more effectively?

Absolutely. When we look at the opportunity here for our customers, um, if you're a trucking company today, uh, you're limited to driving that vehicle 11 hours a day because people get tired. With what we're building with the Aurora driver, you should be able to operate that vehicle more like 20 hours a day. And so anything where you can effectively double the productivity of a really expensive asset, like a truck, it's it's hugely beneficial. The driver won't get tired, so you can run longer at lower speeds, so you have more fuel economy, which is good for the environment and good for the bottom line. And of course, while driving a truck is a really important job, and we should be thankful for anyone who's willing to do it, there aren't enough people who actually want to do it because it's it's a tough job. You're away from your family, you're 10 times as likely to die as the average American on the job. So, it really it it it's I feel incredibly fortunate working at a place where we kind of check all the boxes in terms of helping society and the economy.

Um, of course, you're not the only guys who are working on, uh, this kind of product. Tesla, notably, also working on autonomous driving for the certainly electric for trucks. Um, so when you look at the competitive landscape, is it sort of a winner take all situation? Why do you think Aurora is going to be competitive here?

Yeah. So so there's a there's a bunch of reasons. Um, right, we've been building a company, we're about eight years old today. Um, along the way, we've made a lot of the right decisions to to be here. There's a lot of the competition in the space has kind of, you know, frankly, died or fallen off. So, when we look at our advantages, we have some technological advantages. So the we have the special kind of lidar that can see twice as far as anyone else. We have an ecosystem advantage. Today, we work with Continental, one of the world's leading automotive provider or automotive technology providers, Nvidia. We work with Paccar and Volvo Trucks. They make about half the trucks sold in the US market today. And then we have incredible customers, like, uh, FedEx, Uber Freight, uh, Werner, Schneider, uh, and others that we can't talk about today. And these are the big names in the space. So we're positioned with the technology and the partnerships, and then we have an incredible amount of know-how in the company, uh, to actually go deliver this technology.

Chris, you know, we're talking about the commercial side here. I'm very curious to get your take on the consumer side as well when it comes to autonomous driving. When do you think we see mass rollout, mass adoption of that technology, Chris? You know, in terms of the timeline is it five years, 10 years, longer?

I think the good news is we're coming out of the the valley of disillusionment in the Gartner hype curve. But if you're in San Francisco today, and you stand on a street corner, you're going to see one, two, three, uh, self-driving vehicles pass you. Uh, and they're operating today, and from what I hear, it's an amazing experience. Uh, come later this year, you're going to start to see Aurora's trucks on the road serving customers in Texas, and then we're going to grow that over the next few years. So, uh, I think it's really exciting to see, um, the promise of this technology we've been talking about for a decade or more starting to be practically realized for for everyone.

Chris, as far as I can tell, you guys are not just pre-profit, you're pre-revenue as well. I mean, you're going to get all these trucks on the road, you have customers, but the customers haven't paid you yet cuz there's no trucks that are driving, at least not at scale yet. When is all of that going to happen?

Yeah, so we are actually paid today. So we haul loads between Dallas and Houston and between Fort Worth and El Paso. And we get paid for that. Uh, you know, in finance geek speak, it's contra R&D instead of revenue. Um, but we we're actually, uh, you know, a top five percent carrier in the US, I think, today, just on scale. Uh, and so if you've had a package shipped between Dallas and Houston, there's a really good chance that that that traveled on Aurora truck. Uh, later this year, we'll begin operating with nobody in some of those trucks and then grow that from one initially to tens by the end of the year to hundreds next year, and then on to, uh, thousands and tens of thousands in the coming years.

Chris, great to see you. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.

Really appreciate your time. Thank you.