Lidar Startup Goes Public, Makes Founder a Billionaire
Luminar used a special purpose acquisition company to avoid a traditional IPO.
Luminar founder Austin Russell has become one of the youngest self-made billionaires after his lidar company debuted on public markets on Thursday. Russell, 25, was just 17 when he founded Luminar in 2012. Shares of Luminar rose above $30 a share on Friday, a massive 43 percent gain for the day on top of big gains on Thursday.
Luminar has emerged as one of the leading companies in the fast-growing lidar industry. Carmakers are expected to begin offering lidar as an advanced option for their vehicles in the next few years to enable better driver-assistance technology. Right now, lidar companies are vying to win contracts to supply these sensors.
Luminar had a major win in May when it signed a deal with Volvo to supply lidar sensors for vehicles starting in 2022. It was one of the first such deals in the industry.
More recently, Luminar struck a deal to supply lidar sensors to Mobileye, the Intel subsidiary that supplies many of the camera-based driver assistance systems in today’s cars. Luminar is supplying sensors for Mobileye’s self-driving prototypes, not production vehicles, so it wasn’t a huge deal on its own. But if Mobileye winds up building its next-generation technology around Luminar’s lidar—far from a sure thing—it could lead to a lot of Luminar lidar sales in the future.
While industry leader Velodyne has traditionally made 360-degree spinning units designed to sit on a vehicle roof, Luminar’s sensors are fixed in place and cover a 120 degree horizontal field of view in front of a vehicle.
Long range is viewed as essential for advanced self-driving systems, and Luminar claims its lidar has an industry-leading range of 250 meters. One reason for this is that its lasers operate at an unusual frequency. Most lidar sensors operate at around 900nm—largely because silicon-based lasers and sensors work well around this frequency. However, 900nm lasers are subject to strict power limits because they can damage the human retina.
For the entire article CLICK HERE
