Lidar company Quanergy to go public via $1.4B SPAC deal – TechCrunch

Quanergy Systems, the Sunnyvale, California-based lidar company, said Tuesday it has agreed to merge with special purpose acquisition fund CITIC Capital Acquisition Corp., a Chinese blank-check firm affiliated with the country's largest state-owned investment conglomerate. The deal, which puts an implied valuation on Quanergy at $1.4 billion, is expected to close in the second half of 2021. After closing, the transaction will inject the lidar company with around $278 million in pro forma net cash, including $40 million in private investment in public equity (PIPE) funding. Lidar is an essential component of most autonomous driving systems -- the notable exception being Tesla's stack, which is attempting to develop a pure vision-based system to support its pursuit of automated driving (Tesla vehicles are not autonomous today and have what is considered a Level 2 advanced driver assistance system). Quanergy is a developer of solid state silicon lidar units, which pulses a low-power laser through an optical phased array to measure the distance and shape of objects.