'Driverless Trucks' Theme Reemerges... Market Cap Surges by 600 Billion Won in Just One Day

Aurora Innovation Inc. (AUR) closed at $4.88 on the Nasdaq, up 5.04%, lifting its share price to roughly KRW 7,000. Trading volume topped 16 million shares, and its market capitalization reached approximately $7.79 billion (around KRW 11.5 trillion), a one-day increase of about $410 million (roughly KRW 600 billion).

The company recently garnered attention by announcing that Germany’s Aumovio and Amazon Web Services are jointly building a data processing and validation platform for autonomous vehicle development, on which Aurora’s first large-scale commercialization project for self-driving trucks will be based. In addition, Aurora has completed integration with US transportation software provider McLeod Software, enabling shippers and carriers to book its unmanned truck services directly through their existing transportation management systems.

Founded in 2017 by engineers from Google’s Waymo, Tesla’s Autopilot, and Uber’s autonomous driving division, Aurora Innovation is developing the “Aurora Driver” system for both trucks and passenger vehicles. After launching commercial driverless truck operations on a freight route in Texas, the company plans to phase into the long-haul freight market linking major logistics hubs across the US, adding nighttime and adverse-weather operations and expanding to new routes.