Aurora Innovation is a company that likes to break barriers in Pittsburgh.

In 2007, one of its founders was part of a winning team for a competition that had autonomous vehicles navigating urban roads. In 2018, Aurora was the first startup to receive authorization from the state’s Department of Transportation to operate autonomous vehicles on public roads.

In 2020, it acquired Uber’s self-driving division — a much higher profile operation that once seemed like the leader to beat…

Founded in 2017, Aurora started off with deep expertise and experience in the self-driving industry, with ties to Google’ self-driving car project, now called Waymo, Uber’s ATG and Tesla’s Autopilot.

It also had ties to Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics program and the school’s team for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Grand Challenge, a race to develop self-driving technology.
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