Ouster and Velodyne, two lidar companies, have agreed to a merger in an all-stock transaction, the companies said Monday. Both Ouster and Velodyne will maintain a 50% stake in the new company, according to the agreement that was signed on November 4. The merger comes as many in the industry, including autonomous vehicle technology company Cruise's CEO Kyle Vogt, have been expecting another round of consolidation in the lidar space. That's in part because there are too many lidar companies for how many OEMs are implementing the sensor for autonomous driving applications. It's also because many of these companies, including Ouster and Velodyne, went public via special purpose acquisition (SPAC) at potentially inflated valuations that were based on projected revenue, not actual revenue. Earlier this year, Velodyne acquired AI and lidar company Bluecity.ai,

In Part 1 (published 17/07/2021), I explored the parallels between the automotive LiDAR and telecom optics investment booms, and posited that going forward, consolidation and pivots for automotive LiDAR companies are inevitable. I got great comments from many people, thank you. I will try and address some of them here, a critical one being whether LiDAR is needed at all for AV safety. I feel that this issue is an important one to address before delving into LiDAR consolidation and opportunities, which is the subject of Part 2 (in progress). One writer commented that I had overlooked the fact that telecom relied on guided optics (over fiber) while LiDAR operates in free space, and therefore has other significant technical challenges.

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.

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.

For years, the lidar business has had a lot of hype but not a lot of hard numbers. Dozens of lidar startups have touted their impressive technology, but until recently it wasn't clear who, if anyone, was actually gaining traction with customers. This summer, three leading lidar makers have done major fundraising rounds that included releasing public data on their financial performance. The latest lidar maker to release financial data is Ouster, which announced a $42 million fundraising round in a Tuesday blog post. That blog post also revealed a striking statistic: the company says it now has 800 customers.

Amazon's recent offer to acquire Zoox places them squarely in the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) space, competing with the likes of Waymo, Tesla and others for movement automation of people and goods. As a reminder, Zoox is the San Francisco, California based company with a breathtakingly bold vision – to develop purpose-made autonomous electric vehicles for ride-hailing, and deliver services to consumers through this platform. Executing this vision means competing on multiple fronts with big players- automotive OEMs (designing and building cars), tech companies like Google (who has spent a decade and a fortune to develop the Autonomous Vehicle Driving System or AVS), and ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft LYFT . To date, Zoox has raised $1B and hired close to 1000 people, but without any revenues, they probably need 10X the investment. A recent article covers the details of the Zoox acquisition, and posits that an important driver was Zoox's expertise in computer vision.

Amazon's recent offer to acquire Zoox places them squarely in the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) space, competing with the likes of Waymo, Tesla and others for movement automation of people and goods. As a reminder, Zoox is the San Francisco, California based company with a breathtakingly bold vision – to develop purpose-made autonomous electric vehicles for ride-hailing, and deliver services to consumers through this platform. Executing this vision means competing on multiple fronts with big players- automotive OEMs (designing and building cars), tech companies like Google (who has spent a decade and a fortune to develop the Autonomous Vehicle Driving System or AVS), and ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft LYFT. To date, Zoox has raised $1B and hired close to 1000 people, but without any revenues, they probably need 10X the investment. A recent article covers the details of the Zoox acquisition, and posits that an important driver was Zoox's expertise in computer vision.

When it comes to robocars, new LIDAR products were the story of CES 2018. Far more companies showed off LIDAR products than can succeed, with a surprising variety of approaches. CES is now the 5th largest car show, with almost the entire north hall devoted to cars. In coming articles I will look at other sensors, software teams and non-car aspects of CES, but let's begin with the LIDARs. When it comes to robocar LIDAR, the pioneer was certainly Velodyne, who largely owned the market for close to a decade. Their $75,000 64-laser spinning drum has been the core product for many years, while most newer cars feature their 16 and 32 laser "puck" shaped unit.