Venture firms Greylock Partners and Index Ventures co-invested in Aurora’s $90 million Series A round, Aurora said. Greylock’s Reid Hoffman, who also-co-founded LinkedIn, and Index’s Mike Volpi are also joining the young company’s board of directors.

“The money is important, but the headline for us is the people that are joining the board,” Chris Urmson, Aurora’s CEO and a former head of Google’s self-driving car project, told Forbes. “These are Class A people.”

Along with Urmson, Aurora’s other co-founders include Sterling Anderson, who previously led Tesla’s Autopilot team, and Drew Bagnell, a Carnegie Mellon University scientist and former top member of Uber’s autonomous technology team. Although a new company, the extensive experience the three have in self-driving cars elevates Aurora into the technology’s top tier, which includes Alphabet’s Waymo, General Motors’ Cruise, Uber, Tesla and Aptiv, the autonomous tech company spun out of Delphi last year.
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