Luminar, a leading global automotive technology company, announced it is acquiring high-performance laser manufacturer Freedom Photonics. This transaction follows a multi-year collaboration and brings fundamental next-generation chip-scale laser technology, IP, and production expertise in-house for Luminar lidar systems.
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Luminar is vertically integrating across core lidar components that will enable low costs, supply chain security and improved performance. This transaction follows the acquisition of subsidiaries Black Forest Engineering for custom signal processing chips in 2017 and Optogration Inc. in 2021 for receiver chips. This integration extends Luminar’s industry leadership on its path towards democratizing safety and autonomy for the automotive industry.
“Component-level innovation and integration is critical to our performance, cost and continued automotive technology leadership. Bringing Freedom Photonics into Luminar enables a new level of economies of scale, deepens our competitive moat and strengthens our future technology roadmap,” said Jason Eichenholz, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Luminar. “We’ve worked closely with the Freedom team for the past several years. They have proven to be the best in the world for breakthrough semiconductor laser chip technology, where both power and beam quality are needed simultaneously for true high resolution at long range.”
The Freedom Photonics executive team will continue to lead and expand the business upon close of the transaction, which is expected in the second quarter.
“Joining Luminar is the perfect opportunity for Freedom Photonics, providing us an accelerated path to at-scale commercialization of our world-class diode laser technologies,” said Milan Mashanovitch, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Freedom Photonics. “In addition to helping extend Luminar’s automotive industry leadership, we will continue to serve and grow our broad customer base across other key markets.”
This all-stock transaction will not have a material impact on Luminar’s cash position or share count. Today the company filed a registration statement publicly registering the shares that may be issued in connection with this transaction.
About Luminar Technologies
Luminar is a global automotive technology company ushering in a new era of vehicle safety and autonomy. For the past decade, Luminar has built an advanced hardware and software platform to enable its more than 50 industry partners, including the majority of global automotive OEMs. From Volvo Cars and Mercedes-Benz for consumer vehicles and Daimler Trucks for commercial trucks, to tech partners NVIDIA and Intel’s Mobileye, Luminar is poised to be the first automotive technology company to enable next-generation safety and autonomous capabilities for production vehicles