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Many electric-vehicle and self-driving startups that had raised
cash easily through IPOs and mergers with blank-check firms
during the market boom are now scrambling to launch vehicles and
burning cash rapidly amid a bleak economy and supply-chain
snarls.
Reuters reported in 2020 that Apple was moving forward with its
self-driving car technology and was targeting 2024 to produce a
passenger vehicle that could include its own breakthrough
battery technology.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has invested in San
Francisco-based self-driving car maker Cruise, which is valued
at $30 billion and counts General Motors Co as a majority
stakeholder.
Urmson, who co-founded Aurora after running Google owner
Alphabet Inc's self-driving car project, also floated measures
including cost cuts, taking the company private and spinning off
or selling assets, the report said, citing an internal memo.
(https://bloom.bg/3ReFDgP)
Aurora declined to comment.
Shares of the company closed 15% higher on Friday, but have lost
nearly 80% this year, in a sign of its struggles since going
public late last year with a blank-check firm. It has a market
cap of about $2.4 billion.
Last month, Aurora said it would delay the delivery of its
scalable autonomous freight trucks by a year to the first half
of 2024, citing supply constraints.
Other options Urmson suggested in the memo were to buy companies
in the sector with $150 million to $300 million of cash, and to
freeze hiring and lay off employees, the Bloomberg report said.
(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika
Syamnath)
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