On Thursday, 11 September 2025, Aurora Innovation (NASDAQ:AUR) presented its strategic outlook at Morgan Stanley's 13th Annual Laguna Conference. The company showcased its advancements in autonomous trucking, highlighting achievements and future plans while addressing industry skepticism. Aurora's CFO, David Maday, emphasized the company's focus on safety and partnerships as it navigates the path to commercialization.

Key Takeaways

* Aurora has operated over 50,000 driverless miles on public roads.

* The company holds $1.3 billion in cash, expected to last until the second quarter of 2027.

* Plans include expanding operations to rain conditions and additional lanes in 2025.

* Aurora aims to scale operations in the Sun Belt by 2026 and explore the robotaxi market post-2027.

* Regulatory environments in 39 states support Aurora's driverless operations.

Financial Results

* Cash Position: Aurora ended the last quarter with $1.3 billion in cash and short-term investments.

* Runway: The company believes its cash will sustain operations until at least Q2 2027.

* Fundraising: Aurora remains open to future fundraising opportunities.

Operational Updates

* Driverless Operations: Surpassed 50,000 miles of driverless operation on public roads.

* Expansion: Initiated commercial driverless operations and expanded to a second lane.

* Conditions: Plans to include operations in rain conditions by 2025.

* Hardware Development: Second and third-generation hardware kits are in progress.

* Volvo Trucks: Operations with Volvo Trucks using second-generation hardware to commence later this year.

Future Outlook

* 2025 Focus: Proving technology in adverse conditions and on longer lanes.

* 2026-2027 Focus: Scaling the business, introducing advanced hardware, and increasing revenue.

* Geographic Expansion: Plans to operate throughout the Sun Belt by 2026.

* Robotaxi Market: Potential entry after the launch of third-generation hardware, not before 2027.

Q&A Highlights

* First Mover Advantage: Aurora is focused on commercializing its business.

* System Redundancy: Systems are designed for minimal risk maneuvers if issues arise.

* Regulatory Environment: No regulatory challenges expected in states planned for operations in 2026.

Aurora Innovation's strategic plans and operational progress underline its commitment to leading the autonomous trucking industry. For a detailed account, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Morgan Stanley's 13th Annual Laguna Conference:

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Great. Let's keep it going. Next up, we have Aurora Innovation, an autonomous trucking company that's actually running driverless trucks on public roads in the U.S. today, $10 billion market cap. I'm very happy to welcome back to Laguna CFO, David Maday. David, thanks for being here. What are the differences your makes? Last Laguna, your stock was, I think, under $2, and you were very much a show-me story. Since then, you've actually launched commercial driverless operations that you've now started to expand to a second lane. You're doing it at night. Many boxes have been checked, and your market cap is approaching $11 billion. Well done, I'd say. It's a good 12 months.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Hi.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: With that, I think you have a few opening remarks, though.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah, so perfect. Thanks a lot, Ravi, Nancy, and the entire Morgan Stanley group. This is a great event, not just the venue itself. It's very well attended, and you get lots of great questions in the one-on-one. Really excited about that. Just a little bit for those that aren't super familiar with Aurora, right? I think for us, everything starts with the fact we're a mission-driven company. Our mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. It guides everything that we do. As Ravi mentioned, we are the only company operating driverless on public roads in the trucking space. We're super proud of that. We just passed 50,000 miles this last weekend, and we continue to deliver towards our mission. The Aurora Driver is our product.

It is a combination of industry-leading hardware, cutting-edge technology, and our verifiable software, AI-driven software, data services, et cetera. Trucking is our first market. It's big. It's a trillion-dollar market. It's 200 billion VMT, and we think that the Aurora Driver can create tremendous value for this industry. Really excited about that. I'm sure we'll talk more about it. We think that having a partnership ecosystem is not only important. Honestly, it's critical, essential to actually achieving a scalable business. We're proud to have partners on the OEM front, with the likes of PACCAR and Volvo Trucks. We think all of our customers are partners, right? We've got our customers like Hirschbach and Uber Freight. They're actually operating driverless on our launch lane, and many of our other partners who are customers, the FedEx, Schneider, Werner of the world. Really excited about this progress.

We also have and rely upon partners to develop our future hardware generations, like Continental or Movio when they officially change. Really excited about the opportunity. We also understand we can't do it without partnerships. We've got a really solid financial position. At the end of last quarter, we ended with $1.3 billion in cash and short-term investments. We believe that will push us into at least the second quarter of 2027. We're very fortunate to have a very supportive, long-focused investor base who has continued to support our journey. We'll continue to be opportunistic in terms of fundraising in the future. A little bit about what's next. The remainder of 2025, it's all about proving the technology promise. It's great to have driverless trucks on the road. It was an incredibly important milestone, but it does not make a viable product for the industry.

When we launched, we launched in daytime in dry conditions. Now we're operating day and night. We're able to pull that ahead. We have to operate in rain. We have to operate on longer lanes. We still have to prove the promise for our customers. We're really excited and are very confident in our path for the remainder of this year. For 2026 and 2027, it's all about scaling the business, right? Introducing our second and third-generation hardware kits, introducing scalable platforms with our OEM partners, delivering to customer endpoints, and generating meaningful revenue. It's a really important time. One little plug at the end, which is we're really focused on building public trust and transparency. If you go to our YouTube channel at @AuroraDriver, any day you can watch our trucks actually operating. We live stream it, rotate through a series of those every day, and it's available anytime.

It's basically 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Central. Check out the trucks. It's pretty cool. With that, turn back to you.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: You're right. We should have put it on the screen back here.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: I told you.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Thank you for that great intro. Maybe I'll start with kind of my stupid intro, which is it has been an incredible 12 months for you. What has it been like on the inside? Has it been like putting out fires on a daily basis? Has it been cool, calm, collected with Chris kind of just pulling at the strings? What's it been like?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: I'd be lying to you if it was cool, calm, and collected. I think it's a combination of things. Number one, a tremendous amount of pride and excitement of what we've delivered to date. We set a series of big milestones that we put out there for the public to evaluate, and one of them was to show it's real. We did that. That, in its own right, does not create a business. It doesn't create value for customers. It doesn't create value for our partners. While we enjoyed that and we think it's a hell of an accomplishment, ultimately, at the end of the day, for us, it's all about execution of the plan. We continue to be really focused in on this. At 2025, as I mentioned, it's about the technology promise, and it's proving to folks that we can do what we've said that we can do.

We can do it really well. It's working collaboratively with our customers, with our partners, and really developing something that can be outstanding and transformational in the future. We're really excited. We're really proud. We're the only company that's doing it. We're really excited about that. All that excitement, we have to transform that and focus in on execution. Execution is something I think about almost every day.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. You're a CFO. You're good at math. Correct me if I'm wrong here. You did your first driver-out run end of April. End of June, you did 20,000 miles, so two months. Now you did 50,000 miles, so a little over two months. Is the pace of that mile collection kind of accelerating? How do you see that trending in the course of the next few months?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah, it is trending, and it will continue to go up. I think it's important for us to kind of measure where we are. We've said all along that we are approaching this as a crawl-walk-run. It is really important for us to continue not to focus just on one particular metric. That's why we don't say, hey, we're going to hit 100,000 miles by X date. I think that that's really not what you're trying to achieve. It doesn't create any better of a business than the other one. This is about balancing the driverless miles and continuing to exert the muscle that you need to create a viable long-term business. We're supporting at the same time, we have a driverless fleet of vehicles, which we have. We use them for development, too, right?

We're actually trying to continue to not only build up the driverless miles, but we're also trying to launch our next feature capability. In this case, it's rain and in additional lanes, Fort Worth to El Paso and El Paso to Phoenix. We're balancing both, and we're doing it deliberately. We have three trucks that regularly run the driverless route in Dallas and Houston today. We are going to increase that in the future. We're also going to continue to focus on the technology. Running a whole bunch of miles on just one lane without doing any of the other stuff, also not super interesting, right? We've got to do all the things really well.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. In the first six months, the first 50,000 miles, any surprises so far? Any kind of edge cases that you guys had not evaluated? Any good surprises, any bad surprises?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: No. Honestly, it's been surprising.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Maybe it's good that we didn't have the thing in the back.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: No. If we weren't confident, we wouldn't have an Aurora Driver Live out there for everybody.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Yeah, absolutely.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: We always learn. Part of the safety case framework, part of the mentality is continuous learning. We're not going to do everything perfect. There are times when you have to learn. It makes the product better. The product itself, from the time we launched it, has been great. We send them out every day. They do a great job. We're constantly learning how to scale a business. The driverless trucks themselves, it's been amazing and remarkable. Every time I go and watch one of them live, I'm always amazed. You see all kinds of different scenarios. I was watching the other day with an extra-wide vehicle blocking some of the lanes. You get to see something new every day. You get to see the Aurora Driver perform. To date, most of you know we have a front-seat observer in the vehicle as we operate in our driverless mode.

We do that at the request of PACCAR. It's still driverless mode. It operates every day. The front-seat observer never has to do anything. It's been really exciting for us. It continues to build the confidence that we know what we're doing. We are the leader in this. We're looking forward to actually adding rain and opening up our next lane. We're really excited.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Yep. This is a serious question. How do you ensure the front-seat observer stays awake? Because, I mean, a lot of the companies I speak to say that it's going to be a crawl-walk-run on their side, where once they get the truck, they're going to put their own observer in it for a while, or they do a team thing. Honestly, if the driver is going to be there to take over if something bad happens, he needs to be engaged. Have you noticed this guy fall asleep? Is he playing video games? What's he doing?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: They're observing. No, they don't fall asleep. It's really important to have good standard operating procedures and trainers. It's important to also note that our observers, when they do it, they're still providing feedback to the development team on how the truck is operating and what they like and don't like. Drivers are a critical element of our business and our company, and their feedback is always useful. If we're going to have somebody in there at the request of PACCAR, we need them to be available to do it in case something did happen. Look, we know that the Aurora Driver is confident. We passed our safety case. We see it do all the things they do. We even know if there's failures, that our Aurora Driver is going to be there. It wouldn't be very useful for us to just be disingenuous about it.

Again, the driver is providing feedback. I mean, the observer is providing feedback every day. The analog is the ride-hailing type. Ride-hailing has been doing it for a long time. They get feedback all the time. It's called somebody in the rear seat observing the vehicle and telling you what they liked and didn't like. We haul toilet paper, Coke, or something like that. For us, you don't get that same benefit. We take a look at this as an opportunity to continue to give feedback.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. That makes sense. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, can you just very quickly tell us why PACCAR said they wanted that?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Like any great partnership, there's always going to be good things. We're not always going to agree on things. For us, I think PACCAR's philosophy, they can talk about why they're concerned about it. As we've discussed it, we have prototype parts in the truck that haven't passed their validation process to be what they determine to be safe for them. For the Aurora Driver, our responsibility as the Aurora Driver, we know that it's safe. We have to assume that parts fail, unfortunately. That's the point of having redundancies. That's the point of doing everything. We have a different philosophy on this. You can agree to disagree and still move forward. We still think they're a great partner. We'll respect the differences. It does not impact our development.

That's the thing that was really important for us in agreeing to this, is we still have to do a whole bunch of stuff. We have an observer in there. We have them sit in the front seat, make sure they're a licensed driver. There's a ton of work that we still have to do in terms of the development. When we launch future fleets of vehicles, there will not be a requirement for an observer. That's kind of how we think about it.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. Let's talk about scalability. Are you absolutely surprised to the upside by launching nighttime driving early in the third quarter? You reported it on your 2Q conference call. What can we expect for, I mean, the next conference call? I think what's the timeline for rain? What's the timeline for Volvo? What's the timeline for the second lane?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Timelines for rain and for the additional lanes still is by the end of the year. We are going to continue to focus on delivering that. Again, we are going to do the necessary steps to ensure that we're safe on public roads. Our families drive on those same roads, and it's incumbent on us to do that. I can tell you for certain, we'll launch it when we know it's safe. We get asked the question a lot. There are no technological challenges here. It's not that we need to continue to develop stuff. We just have to turn the crank and do our validation process and do the necessary steps that are important to ensure we have a safe product on the road. There's no invention that's required. We just have to continue to do the work.

I expect that we'll see really great progress towards the end of 2025.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. The second OEM?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: We're going to be operating Volvo Trucks later this year with our second-generation hardware that's being developed by Fabrinet in Thailand. It'll be B-sample hardware, and then eventually moving into C-sample. It will be started off with development. We'll operate autonomously with vehicle operators to ensure the safety, because we have not approved it for driverless. Both us for the second-generation hardware, as well as Volvo. Volvo needs to approve the platform. This is their scalable platform, what they call C-Build. It's basically their scalable platform design. They still have more work to do to validate it. When they're ready to validate and operate driverless, and when we've validated the second-generation hardware on that, we'll take that and we'll operate it driverless.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. Remind me, the PACCAR is not Fabrinet?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: No, the PACCAR trucks, they are on our first generation.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: First generation.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: That we've designed and manufactured.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. The next level of scalability is, to your point, it kind of makes no sense to just keep bombing up and down the same lane and doing it in the same conditions. It doesn't really serve any purpose. One of the debates we've had with investors and with companies in the industry is how long it's going to take to expand, not from one to two lanes, but to 5, 10, 50, 100 lanes across the country, right? We've seen this on the robotaxi side, where Waymo took years, maybe decades, to launch their first city. The second one came pretty quickly. The third one came really quickly. Now it's like a city a month sort of thing. Is that the kind of timeline we're looking at? How does that scalability go?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah, I think once we're able to operate in rain, so then therefore we've got day, night, and rain, you're able to operate in most all of the environmental conditions that need to be. The self-similarity of the U.S. highway system, whether you operate in Dallas or in Arizona or in Louisiana, the self-similarity of the highway system is pretty evident. It's the same reason I can drive a car in multiple states, right? I would expect that this will actually happen quite quickly. I think it will look actually probably even more aggressive and faster than what you might compare Waymo's first, second, and third markets in driverless. We do expect that we'll be operating throughout the Sun Belt in 2026. We're fairly confident. Again, it's the same thing. There's nothing new that we need to invent. There's nothing new that we need to experience. We drive the route.

It becomes part of our mapping environment. Or we drive it a couple of times. We determine if there's anything new that we haven't experienced in another area. If there is, then we have to go design the test and validate the system for that. We would expect that you're really not seeing a lot of new stuff as you go through there. Traffic is the same throughout. You have to be able to handle heavy traffic. Even if the frequency of heavy traffic is more, you still have to handle heavy traffic. You still have to handle merging. You still have to handle hard braking. You still have to handle people cutting in. You still have to be present and be aware of animals crossing in the road. I think all the really challenging things that people talk about, it's evident already.

It's really just turning the crank on the next area. One of the things that I think is really what really separates it a little bit is our validation process and our ability to go from the next lane. It was one of the reasons why we were able to pull a night ahead, actually. Our ability to validate the software and to pass all the appropriate tests and to know that we're going to be acceptably safe on the public roads, that turning that crank and that flywheel is just increasing for us every time. I do totally expect we're operating throughout the Sun Belt in 2026.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. Another somewhat misnomer out there is that you guys only do highway and point-to-point in the highway. You have said that you can do surface street as well to the customer endpoint. Can you just specifically talk about what the capability of the truck is expected to be at commercial serial production launch? Where can it go from a warehouse to a factory?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Today we operate between our terminals. Here are some facts. Our terminal in Houston is five miles off the highway. The route that we take to go to our terminal is five miles off the highway. It happens to be right by several of our partners' DCs. Generally speaking, most all warehouses' DCs in the trucking industry are really close to highways. As a matter of fact, 80% of them are within five miles of a highway. That's just the setup of the industry.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: That's the point.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: It's just different. For us, there isn't anything new to develop. We operate on surface streets today. We'll obviously look at it. If I saw something that was challenging, we would code it as hard and we would need to do it. One of the things is if we go through a school zone, you have to make sure that you validate through a school zone. Aside from that, we've already experienced everything. We do it. It's the same way as the highways. We're really just kind of going off highway. It would be true if all of them were in urban city centers and things like that. You could argue that that's a little bit harder. In this particular case, it's not. The data is pretty apparent. There's a reason. People need big space. They need to put a lot of tractors. Warehouses need a lot of space.

Depots need a lot of space. For us, I don't think that that's really a valid argument or consideration. I think we're doing it today. We expect 80% of the market to fall within what we're doing today.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. When you look at the competitive environment, there's this -- I push back on investors all the time when people say, hey, who's going to win? I'm like, there doesn't have to be one winner here, right? What do you think this industry looks like in 2030? How many players are there? If you want to name names, go ahead. What do you think sourcing looks like? Is it an 80/20 on the OEM side? Who's running their own operations? Who's not? What's industry structure in five years?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: When I think about 2030, we've got a crawl-walk-run approach. I think by 2030, we're running, right? We're operating throughout most of the U.S. We've integrated with a lot of our partners. We've got our third-generation hardware kit that's being produced, being manufactured by Continental, being directly shipped to OEMs and line-side installed. You've got customers buying kits and us doing subscriptions. I expect this to be an integral part of the industry. I don't expect that today. Today, this is the crawl portion of this, and that's a little bit of the misnomer of what's going on. It is going to take some time. By 2030, I think we're going to be there. The market's trillion dollars, $200 billion vehicle miles traveled per year. There's going to be competition. I don't know who they are. I'm not going to guess or predict who they are.

There's going to be competition. I think our customers want competition. Our OEMs want competition. This industry is set up so you're not single-sourcing everything. I think we have a multi-year lead, just to be honest. My personal belief is we have a multi-year lead. My belief is that we are the only player today that is actually thinking long-term about commercialization. We're the only one that has two generations of hardware in development plus one on the road. We think about building a business, and I think we're going to continue to work on that lead. If there's other competition out there, that's great. I think it's just going to make us even better. I think competition breeds innovation, and you shouldn't be afraid of it.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. You guys are talking about crawl-walk-run. Let me ask you a marathon question, which is obviously you're not going to be autonomous trucking only. You also absolutely have sights on the robotaxi market, on the commercial delivery market over time. When do you think you get enough escape velocity in the trucking business that you can start putting serious resources into robotaxi?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Realistically speaking, I think when we launch our third-generation hardware, which would drive down the bound costs again, I think we're at a cost structure that would allow us to be successful in the ride-hailing business. I think the ride-hailing business is, and you've got to hats off to Waymo and what they've done in the ride-hailing business. I give them a ton of credit. It took a ride doing that last time I was in San Francisco. It's a great product. Just like in the trucking business, I expect there's going to be other players. I expect we'll be one of them in the ride-hailing business. The business model is challenged. We need to be able to create value and have a value proposition. We're not going to be the leader. Obviously, Waymo is already there.

We need to make sure that when we enter a market, we have a value proposition and ability to carve out a market opportunity for us. I wouldn't say before 2027, but you know who knows what happens to the world. Maybe there's an opportunity that presents itself. Generally speaking, I wouldn't say until our third-generation hardware kit comes in, do I think we have the right cost structure to really change the landscape.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. Why do you say the business model is challenged? Do you think the revenue per ride is just not enough? Is it a hard thing to do? Why is it?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: I think the trucking market is a much bigger market today.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: True.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: If the ride-hailing market grows, it needs costs to reduce to increase the number of rides. If I just look at driver wages today, they're three times as much as gig economy workers.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: OK, for the labor arbitrage. OK.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah, so there's fundamentally some cost structure differences that make it just way more attractive. The other thing is, look at it. Today, I can go into the trucking space. I can create immediate value by being safer, by improving fuel efficiency, providing predictable, stable supply that integrates within the existing network of drivers that are already there today. I can create value, right, at the cost structure I'm at. I honestly don't know that that's the same in the ride-hailing space. I think I can provide supply, and I think I can be safe. I don't know that I'm creating a ton of value, because the value piece of it has to help grow the market. In ride-hailing, you've got to grow the market. In trucking, I think you've got to support the market.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. Maybe switching gears a little bit, obviously, you guys have achieved a lot in the last 12 months in your history since 2017. How well known do you think that is in the trucking space? I ask you because, I mean, to be super candid, at this conference, we've had multiple carriers. We asked questions on, hey, what do you think about autonomous trucking? To be honest, the answers haven't been great. It's been a lot of skepticism, a lot of doubt, a lot of honestly misinformation. When the largest carriers in the country don't really understand what you're doing, does there need to be a little bit of a teaching tour or something to demonstrate your capabilities? How do you get past that skepticism?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah, I mean, we could always do a better job on getting our message out and the value propositions and the teaching. I might describe it differently. I think any time you have technology adoption of something of this magnitude, you're going to have folks that are the leaders in technology adoption. You're going to have the fast followers. Then you're going to have the laggards, the show me it's actually real and the money and everything else. I think everybody, if they see the value, will eventually adopt it. Certainly not in that area. If I look at our existing group of partners, we have some folks that are really early tech adopters. If you talk to Hirschbach, they're hugely optimistic on the opportunities in the AV space. They've been a great partner to help us test things and work on things.

We've got a variety of partners, the FedEx, the Schneider, the Werner of the world. I wouldn't call them like the leaders. They're all exploring this technology. They're pretty close to leaders. They might be more of the fast followers, right? They're very knowledgeable of the business. If you go talk to the folks at Werner, they talk to everybody.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Yep.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Right? They're not talking to everybody because they don't believe in the business, right? I think they want to be a part of it. Then you've got groups of people that we don't partner with today. That's conscious. We know they're not interested in it today. We know that we'll have to prove it over time. That's OK, right? We have a crawl-walk-run approach for a reason. We do have to demonstrate the value, and we have to execute. I think over time, it's impossible for me to say that if you can provide a safer product that is less expensive and it solves some of the major industry pain points, why it can't be accepted. We'll have to continue to prove it.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Does it feel like it's easier to penetrate private fleets first?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: I don't know if it's really private fleets. I think it's just the type of customer and what they think. Hirschbach is an FTL, and they're super tech-forward, right? I don't know. I think it just depends on their business. It depends on how they feel about their driver pool and how they message it. Hirschbach leaned in heavily. We actually had their most cynical drivers come and drive our trucks. They allowed us to videotape it, and they gave us interviews. They walked away saying, we've got to have this technology. I just think it's how you approach it. We have to demonstrate value. I think we're demonstrating value. I think we're doing it the right way. I don't think every AV company in the trucking space in the past did it the right way.

Folks had said, hey, I'm going to launch, I'm going to have 15,000 trucks on the road in year one. It's like that's completely idiotic and really not understanding the market, right? That's why we've been very focused on our crawl-walk-run approach. Thus far, we've been delivering.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Got it. Questions from the audience?

Unidentified speaker, Audience Member: Could you talk a little bit about what you view as kind of the advantages of being a first mover and maybe some of the moats that you think the business is building above and beyond the tech itself? I ask that maybe just to preface within the context of if self-driving tech itself is kind of there's an endpoint to it. Because once we prove the case it can self-drive, then how does being there first, being a couple of years ahead, allow us to maintain that lead even as others get to a tech that is fully self-driving?

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Does that lead go away after two years, two years after that point?

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: It's a good question. I think we view it as running a business and commercializing a business. I think some people characterize it as a race to get to a driverless product that they can demonstrate. We've never been that way. We don't talk about it that way. We talk about driving miles, integrating with our customers. What I think is what gives us this multi-year lead in my mind is that we're not talking about the product we have today. We're working on our second and third-generation hardware. We're talking about integrating with OEM partners in the long term. We're talking about how we integrate with our customers today. We're signing agreements like we had with McLeod to have a TMS solution that can reach thousands of the smaller carriers. For us, we think about actually driving to a business.

I think the further you work on that and the more you understand the needs of those customers, getting to their endpoints, I think it just builds credibility. A lot of people are talking about, and honestly, most of the carriers will tell you that they're so tech-talked out, they don't even know how to differentiate between them. The simple fact of the matter is we're operating driverless. We're integrating with our folks. We're thinking about the future. Other people are talking about elements like I'm cheaper or I'm faster. This is a safety-critical industry. I don't know that cheaper and faster is my best talking point. We want to talk about how we build a business and transform it together. I think our partnership strategy and a little bit of humility goes a long way. I think the other thing is we want to be the standard bearer.

We want to be the leader. When it comes to regulatory questions, they go to Aurora. When it comes to building trust, they look at Aurora Driver Live. When it comes to talking about your roadmap, they see the Aurora Driver roadmap. I think we have an obligation to help lead this industry and lead it in the right direction. We take that seriously. I think that also gives us an advantage over others.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Right.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Yes. What happens when there's an issue with the truck? Meaning, do you have a central system that can take over if there's an issue or there's some unique situation? Does the observer intervene at that point? Does the truck just pull over on the side? The system is designed to have redundancies everywhere, including backup compute systems. If there is an issue, let's say a bird hits the lidar, our system would do what we call a minimal risk maneuver, and it would pull off the highway to a safe spot. That's what our customers want. They want us to be off the highway into a safe haven. If for whatever reason we couldn't get off the highway, we'd pull over to the side of the road in a safe spot. All of that happens today, even if there was an observer in the vehicle.

All that happens with the Aurora Driver. The observer does not take over if that happens. The system is designed to operate driverless. It has to handle everything driverless. If we relied upon a crutch that says, Paccar wanted us to put the observer back in so we don't have to do X, Y, and Z, all you're doing is masking the challenge. We are driverless, and that's why we use the words, we are driverless. They're not there and intended to drive. We have to operate a driverless business. It goes to everything that we do. In this particular case, we just pull over to the side of the road or off the highway.

Unidentified speaker, Audience Member: You mentioned the rollout across the Southwest in different states. Maybe talk about the challenges to accomplishing that vis-à-vis the regulatory environment.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Yeah, so the regulatory environment today, 39 of the states either explicitly or implicitly allow driverless operations. Everywhere where we're going to be headed in the Sun Belt allows driverless operations today. There are no laws or regulations that need to be achieved. I think the framework and the sentiment at the federal level has been pretty positive, kind of pro-support technology leadership, especially in areas of AI and also reducing regulatory burden. I would say that the feedback in the federal landscape has been pretty positive. We don't actually need anything to operate in all the states that we plan to in 2026.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Very exciting story. We look forward to further catalysts. David, thanks so much for joining us.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: I look forward to being here next year.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Morgan Stanley: Appreciate it.

David Maday, CFO, Aurora Innovation: Thanks.

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