Autonomous vehicle tech firm Luminar is set to merge with blank check company Gores Metropolous for $3.4 billion while accomplishing its IPO on a market roiled by pandemic and global trade issues.
Luminar has based its reputation on developing lidar applications for driver assistance. The company was founded in 2012, and now reportedly has contracts with seven out of the top ten global auto makers, including plans to be integrated with Volvo vehicles starting in 2022. It employs around 350 people and has 50 industry partners.
Part of the Volvo partnership is represented in the new funding for Luminar preceding the IPO, where the Volvo Cars Tech Fund contributes to $170 million in joint outside investor funding, along with Peter Thiel of PayPal and Palantir fame.
In general, the autonomous vehicle industry is facing headwinds. Last month, we reported on issues with driver assistance systems that are less than fully protective, forcing drivers to always seriously monitor lane departure systems and other systems for accuracy, and compelling firms like Tesla to issue prominent warnings about relying too much on “autopilot.”
Luminar is hopeful, though, that some of these technologies will eventually become pretty capable of monitoring what’s around the vehicle. Lidar uses laser-based imaging to look for obstacles in a vehicle’s direct, immediate path.
“You can only make safe decisions based on accurate, real-time 3d data,” says someone in a Luminar promotional video who we assume is CEO Austin Russell. “Solving these challenges requires a lot more than capital and smart and specialized engineers. It takes the audacity to build something entirely from the ground up, hardware as well as software, to make autonomy possible, bring it out of R&D, and actually put it into production.”
Regardless of roadblocks in bringing our vehicles to full autonomy, Luminar is going to make its mark on the market with its IPO, where the company will be traded under the ticker LAZR.