Self-driving has been “almost here” for over a decade. But somewhere between DARPA challenges and a handful of driverless trucks hauling freight between Dallas and Houston, Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson’s story changed. The self-driving truck company started commercial driverless operations last April and is now scaling from a handful of trucks to hundreds this year.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Urmson at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The pair dug into the long road from lab to highway and how physical AI differs from the LLM boom everyone else is chasing.

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Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:49 Urmson’s self-driving journey from DARPA to Aurora

03:30 How macro headwinds and supply constraints are shaping Aurora’s roadmap

06:08 Why trucking beats robotaxis as a business

13:46 How Aurora’s path diverged from Waymo’s

18:09 What 24 years in physical AI teaches you about building a startup

19:33 Why safety hits different when there’s no human in the loop

23:38 Verifiable AI vs. end-to-end systems: why it matters for safety

27:11 Other autonomy companies worth watching

29:04 Real-world data vs. simulation: do you still need both?

30:03 Outro