Chris Urmson has spent the last 20 years pushing the limits of autonomous driving—first at Carnegie Mellon’s DARPA Grand Challenge team, then as co-founder of Google’s self-driving car project, now Waymo.
On this week’s episode, the Aurora CEO retraces that journey—from building robot cars in the desert to leading a public company pioneering driverless trucking.
He shares why autonomy was always a matter of when, not if, how he handled a high-profile departure from Waymo, and what it takes to build at the intersection of deep tech, safety, and infrastructure.
Now eight years into Aurora, Urmson says the future he’s been chasing is finally within reach.
Guest: Chris Urmson, Co-Founder & CEO of Aurora
Chapters:
00:00 Trailer
00:43 Introduction
01:59 FSD: are we there?
14:31 The competition, a million dollar check from LA to LV
22:50 Dream like an amateur, execute like a pro
32:30 Operate with integrity
42:49 The future is here, unevenly distributed
49:36 Underestimated decisions, minimizing regrets
1:03:55 Retaining value
1:16:45 Integrating self-driving
1:28:20 Lifer
1:29:25 Who Aurora is hiring
1:29:53 What “grit” means to Chris
1:30:15 Outro
Mentioned in this episode: Waymo, Google, Rivian, Dmitri Dolgov, Uber, Tesla, The DARPA Grand Challenge, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, United States Department of Defense, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, FedEx, Werner Enterprises, Hirschbach, Schneider Electric, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sebastian Thrun, Batman, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Anthony Levandowski, Donald Trump, Apple iPhone, Airbnb, Blackmore, Stripe, Titan, Ford, Volkswagen, RJ Scaringe, Peterbilt Motors Company, The Volvo Group, Continental AG, Dara Khosrowshahi
Links:
Connect with Chris Urmson
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Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
