Aurora Innovation said Monday it has hired Ossa Fisher as president as the autonomous vehicle company prepares to commercially launch its self-driving truck business next year.
The company said Fisher, who was most recently president and chief operating officer of edtech company Istation, will be based in Dallas. Aurora is headquartered in Pittsburgh with offices in San Francisco and Mountain View, but its testing and autonomous truck operations are in the Dallas area.
Aurora Innovation was founded in 2017 by Sterling Anderson, Drew Bagnell, and Chris Urmson, three veterans of the nascent world of autonomous vehicle technology who previously worked at Tesla, Uber, and Google’s (now Waymo) self-driving project. Urmson is CEO, Anderson is Product Manager, and Bagnell is Chief Scientist.
Fisher’s experience building and running a commercial business will balance the more technical backgrounds of Aurora’s three founders, according to a company spokesperson.
The hiring comes about a year before the company’s planned commercial launch by the end of 2024. Aurora has a number of pilot programs with customers including FedEx, Schneider and Uber Freight, all of which are “paying up.” However, Aurora has designated this as “collaborative income” and does not recognize it as a true commercial operation.
Aurora Innovation said in November that it had enough money to continue developing its autonomous vehicle technology until its commercial launch. The company closed the third quarter with about $1.2 billion in cash and short-term investments.
The company is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings on February 15.
