Lidar Market Star Luminar Has Went Under: Mercedes-Benz and Tesla Supplier Files for Bankruptcy (1 photo)
Founded in 2017, Luminar Technologies specializes in the development and production of lidars—optical radars used to determine the distance to objects and their shapes in self-driving systems. The company recently filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to sell its assets. 
In 2020, Luminar went public through a SPAC transaction, at which point its business was valued at $3 billion. This year, due to a conflict of interest, the company lost its CEO and founder, Austin Russell, who at one point attempted to acquire his brainchild. Furthermore, Luminar has been forced to lay off staff several times, and production volumes have declined so much that Volvo announced it will no longer use the company in its 2026 models.
Bankruptcy protection allows Luminar to continue supplying products and providing technical support to customers, while it is seeking permission from U.S. regulators to sell its lidar and semiconductor businesses. A buyer has already been found for the latter: Quantum Computing intends to acquire it for $110 million. Once all bankruptcy and asset sale procedures are completed, Luminar will cease to exist as an independent company.
Luminar has supplied lidar systems to Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Audi, Toyota, Caterpillar, and even Tesla, the latter of which at one point became its largest customer, despite its CEO, Elon Musk, categorically opposing the use of lidar in active driver assistance systems. Tesla did not specify how Luminar's lidars were used, but it could have been used to calibrate existing equipment in prototype vehicles or to use this type of sensor in the development of Optimus humanoid robots.
