Uber sells self-driving unit Uber ATG in deal that will push Aurora's valuation to $10B

Aurora Innovation, the autonomous vehicle startup backed by Sequoia Capital and Amazon, has reached an agreement with Uber to buy the ride-hailing firm’s self-driving unit in a complex deal that will value the combined company at $10 billion.Aurora is not paying cash for Uber ATG, a company that was valued at $7.25 billion following a $1 billion investment last year from Toyota, DENSO and SoftBank’s Vision Fund. “And then kind of dispassionately looking at what is the technology that accelerates our first product to market and then amplifying that — whether it’s from the existing Aurora team or to the new Aurora team — and pushing that forward, whether it’s ideas or code or bits of hardware together to accelerate our time to market.”The company plans to assess the workforce and technology as quickly as possible, Urmson said.For Uber, the deal marks one of the last expensive pursuits that it had yet to either spin or sell off as the company narrowed in on its core businesses of ride-hailing and delivery. In its S-1 document, Uber said it incurred $457 million of research and development expenses for its ATG and “other Technology Programs” initiatives.Despite the trail of problems that have plagued Uber ATG, Urmson insists that the company has the talent and some interesting technology that makes it a worthy asset.“Some of the work they’ve been doing in designing their next-generation hardware for the vehicles is exciting and interesting,” he said.