Luminar is supplying sensors for Mobileye's self-driving prototypes, not production vehicles, so it wasn't a huge deal on its own.
LUMINAR CEO DRIVER
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. It was one of the first such deals in the industry. Luminar had a major win in May when it signed a deal with Volvo to supply lidar sensors for vehicles starting in 2022. Right now, lidar companies are vying to win contracts to supply these sensors. 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. Luminar has emerged as one of the leading companies in the fast-growing lidar industry. 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 was bought in August by Gores Metropoulos Inc., backed by billionaires Alec Gores and Dean Metropoulos.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. Luminar is the latest buzzy company to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, a publicly traded firm that’s set up solely to combine with another firm that takes over its stock listing. “Now it’s all about scale, execution and seeing it though,” Russell told Reuters. Its financial growth will reportedly depend on turning its research partnerships into production deals. The company has projected long-term annual revenues in the billions of dollars, but it posted a nearly $95 million net loss last year on just about $13 million in revenue. Under Russell’s leadership, Luminar has inked a deal to supply lidar units for Volvo vehicles and secured partnerships with Daimler Truck and Mobileye, Intel’s autonomous vehicle unit. He left Stanford University as a teenager in 2012 to start Luminar with help from a fellowship sponsored by Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley tycoon who’s also invested in Facebook and Palantir. Russell is one of the first billionaires to emerge from the self-driving vehicle market. “We set up the company to be a long-term sustainable business and power the future of autonomy for all of these automakers.” “It is totally surreal and it totally makes sense and it is hard to explain the dichotomy of it, but this has always been the goal,” Russell told CNBC on Thursday. His wealth surged even higher on Friday with Luminar’s shares climbing nearly 37 percent to $31.40, leaving Russell with a paper net worth of nearly $3.3 billion heading into the weekend. That made Russell’s stake of 104.7 million shares - about a third of the company’s outstanding stock - worth $2.4 billion, according to Forbes, which called him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Luminar’s share price surged nearly 28 percent on its Thursday debut to close at $22.98, giving the company a market value of about $7.8 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Florida-based firm - which he founded when he was just 17 - makes so-called lidar scanners that use lasers to give autonomous cars a three-dimensional view of the road and what’s around them. Luminar Technologies CEO Austin Russell, 25, secured a hefty fortune after his company’s stock market debut this week. The founder of a startup that helps cars drive themselves just became a billionaire - and he’s barely old enough to rent a car on his own.
LUMINAR CEO FULL
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