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Luminar Technologies history
Luminar Technologies company history timeline
Founded in December 2012, Luminar is an autonomous vehicle sensor and software company.
To increase the time automotive lidar provides for a vehicle to react safely from one second to seven seconds at highway speeds, in 2013 Luminar decided to reevaluate the standard operating wavelength for lidar systems.
Luminar emerged from stealth mode in April 2017 and received $36 million in series A funding.
In September 2017, Luminar announced a partnership with the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), the research and development arm of Toyota focused on autonomous vehicles, AI, and robotics.
Former Uber executive Brent Schwarz joined Luminar as head of business development in September 2018.
Audi AID (Autonomous Intelligent Driving) announced a partnership with Luminar in December 2018, selecting Luminar's lidar due to its longer 250-meter range and high resolution.
In July 2019, Luminar raised $100 million in additional funding, bringing total capital raised to more than $250 million.
By August 2019, Luminar had 250 employees at the Central Florida Research Park in Orlando and another 100 in California.
In May 2020, Volvo announced a self-driving highway feature, "Highway Pilot", to be powered by Luminar's third-generation Iris lidar.
Daimler AG's truck unit took a minority stake in Luminar in October 2020, investing in the company as part of its efforts to develop self-driving trucks.
On December 3, 2020, Luminar went public, trading as LAZR. Russell retained 83% of the company's voting power and took on the role of chairman.
Also in March 2021, SAIC Motor announced it would use Luminar sensors and Sentinel software to provide autonomous functions in its "R brand" line of vehicles.
The company announced in March 2021 that it had partnered with Volvo's self-driving software subsidiary, Zenseact, to combine Luminar's hardware and Zenseact's OnePilot software into a self-driving system, called Sentinel, to be sold to automakers.
Also in April 2021, Alan Prescott, formerly acting general counsel of Tesla, became Luminar's chief legal officer.
Luminar acquired OptoGration, a chipmaker based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, in July 2021.
In January 2022, Mercedes-Benz announced Luminar will supply the lidar systems for future models of their vehicles including auto assist and full self driving systems.
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Luminar Technologies may also be known as or be related to Luminar Technologies, Luminar Technologies Inc and Luminar Technologies, Inc.