Self-driving company Aurora Innovation launched on Nasdaq this week, which is seen as an industry bellwether event, and its share price performance will be a key indicator of whether capital markets are enthusiastic about self-driving technology.

On November 4th, Aurora completed its listing on NASDAQ through a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Reinvent Technology Partners Y. After the completion of the merger, the stock symbol is AUR, and the new company is priced at $13 billion.

In terms of Aurora financing and IPO performance, capital's response is not enthusiastic. The deal raised $1.8 billion before fees, well below the $2.5 billion expected when it was announced in July, and the financing will remain as a cash flow for at least two years until large-scale commercial products are launched.

Aurora fell 3 per cent on the first day of trading, but recovered its losses on Friday, rebounding by more than 4 per cent.

In fact, Aurora is not the first self-driving company to go public. TuSimple Holdings, which also specialises in truck self-driving, completed its listing in April, but its shares continued to fall after peaking in late June.

The listing of Aurora, a big player in the gathering industry, has attracted much attention.

Aurora's listing has attracted a lot of attention because its market capitalization is by far the largest and the only company dedicated to both automatic "robotic taxis" and freight self-driving.

Founded in 2017, standing behind Aurora are three industry leaders. Among the three founders, Sterling Anderson has served as Tesla, Inc. 's Autopilot project manager, CTO Drew Bagnell has worked in Uber's advanced technology team, responsible for perception and proprietary software, and CEO Chris Urmson has led Alphabet Inc-CL C's self-driving car project for nearly eight years.

Aurora's current partners include Toyota, Uber and Volvo, and the goal is to make the vehicle self-driving at the L4 level, that is, it does not require human interaction when driving on the road.

In terms of products, Aurora plans to launch its first self-driving truck by the end of 2023, integrating its technology into Volvo and Paccar Class 8 trucks. Driverless taxis will be launched in the coming year. The company expects revenue of $2 billion by 2027.

The competition on the self-driving track is fierce.

But large-scale deliveries of driverless cars have been delayed in recent years and there are many obstacles to breaking the regulatory threshold, which may be why capital is cautious about the technology.

In spite of this, the competition on this track is already quite fierce. In addition to electric car maker Tesla, Inc. and others, Waymo, a self-driving subsidiary of Alphabet Inc-CL C's parent company Alphabet, Cruise, General Motors Co's robotic taxi business, and Ford and Volkswagen-backed Argo AI are all fierce rivals to Aurora.

For these competitors, the future performance of Aurora's share price will be an important barometer of whether capital will pay for the technology.

The longer it takes for the technology to achieve commercial scale, the more money will be needed. The two biggest companies in the game, Waymo and Cruise, both considered going public, but ended up turning to private equity, while Argo AI was looking for IPO.