Chris Urmson

Chris Urmson was born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976; the eldest of three boys, he moved around Canada with his family for his father’s work in the Canadian prison system.⁠[1]

He earned a BEng in computer engineering from the University of Manitoba.⁠[2]

In 1998 he began a PhD at the Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It grew out of the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1900, which were renamed the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912 and took the present name after merging with the Mellon Institute in 1967. The university is known for computer science, robotics, engineering, and the arts, and has campuses in Qatar, Silicon Valley, and Rwanda. As of September 2025, it enrolled 16,582 students. Its current president is Farnam Jahanian. On September 30, 2026, the university announced a $3 billion gift from Ken Griffin and plans to build a new campus in Miami.Open the full entry Robotics Institute.⁠[1]

He was director of technology for Carnegie Mellon’s DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge teams.⁠[2]

In 2004 his Carnegie Mellon team entered the robot Sandstorm in the DARPA Grand Challenge; he likened sending it off to a child’s first day of school and said bluntly that the outcome was disappointing.⁠[1]

In 2005 he received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University with the dissertation Navigation Regimes for Off-Road Autonomy, advised by William Whittaker and Reid Simmons.⁠[3]

On November 3, Carnegie Mellon’s Tartan Racing won the Urban Challenge with Boss, a robotised 2007 Chevy Tahoe, on a roughly 55-mile urban course contested by 11 autonomous vehicles, finishing about 20 minutes ahead of second-place Stanford and taking a $2 million prize; the team was led by William Whittaker.⁠[4]

From 2009 to 2016 he helped build GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry’s self-driving program as its CTO.⁠[2]

After Sebastian ThrunSebastian ThrunSebastian Thrun is a German-born computer scientist and entrepreneur who led the Stanford team that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, led Google’s self-driving car project and Google X, and founded the online education company Udacity.Open the full entry left Google X in 2013 he became director of the project, leading it until Google hired John Krafcik as CEO of its car effort.⁠[5]

In March 2015, as head of Google’s driverless car program, he gave the TED2015 talk How a driverless car sees the road, showing how the car perceives the road and makes autonomous decisions; at the time of writing it had about 2.86 million plays.⁠[6]

On August 5, 2016, he announced in a Medium post that he was leaving Google’s self-driving team after about seven and a half years, saying he was ready for a fresh challenge; during his time the project grew from a goal of 100,000 self-driven miles to 1.8 million miles.⁠[5]

In 2017 he co-founded the self-driving company Aurora with Drew Bagnell and Sterling Anderson, becoming its CEO.⁠[7]

By May 2017 Aurora had quietly opened an office in Pittsburgh, with about half its staff there and half in Palo Alto, California.⁠[8]

In January 2017 Tesla sued its former Autopilot head Sterling Anderson, Aurora and Urmson, alleging that Anderson had downloaded large amounts of confidential information and tried to poach staff in breach of his contract; Anderson called the suit meritless. In April the parties settled, with Aurora agreeing to pay Tesla $100,000 and to ongoing audits; Anderson said Tesla withdrew its claims without any finding of wrongdoing.⁠[9]

In February 2019 Aurora raised about $530 million in a Series B round with investment from Amazon and Sequoia, at a valuation of over $2 billion; it already had partnerships with Volkswagen and Hyundai.⁠[10]

He appeared on the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast as CEO of Aurora, in an episode on his self-driving work at Aurora, Google, Carnegie Mellon and in the DARPA challenges.⁠[11]

On December 7, 2020, Aurora announced that it would acquire the employees and technology of Uber’s self-driving unit, Advanced Technologies Group, with Uber investing $400 million in Aurora and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi joining Aurora’s board; Aurora said its first product would be in trucking and freight.⁠[12]

On November 3, 2021, Aurora completed its business combination with the special purpose acquisition company Reinvent Technology Partners Y, with over $1.8 billion in gross proceeds and cash on hand, and began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker AUR the next day.⁠[13]

In May 2025 Aurora began regular driverless commercial freight deliveries between Dallas and Houston for launch customers Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines; he rode on the inaugural trip, and the company said it was the first to operate a commercial driverless heavy-truck service on public roads.⁠[14]

In October 2025 Aurora opened a roughly 600-mile driverless route from Fort Worth to El Paso, passing 100,000 driverless miles with five driverless trucks regularly hauling freight, and planned to deploy hundreds in 2026.⁠[15]

In February 2026 Aurora had ten driverless routes, including a roughly 1,000-mile Fort Worth–Phoenix lane; it had logged 250,000 driverless miles as of January 2026 and targeted more than 200 driverless trucks by year-end and positive free cash flow in 2028.⁠[16]

Aurora: Official website: https://aurora.tech/ (opens in a new window)⁠[7]