Luminar, a lidar startup that’s on the cusp of a public market debut, has announced that it’s teamed up with Mobileye, a self-driving subsidiary of the chip giant Intel, under a partnership that’ll see it supply lidar sensors for Mobileye’s self-driving cars. 

Under the terms of their partnership, Mobileye will buy Luminar lidars for use in the development and testing of its self-driving cars across global cities including Tel Aviv in Israel, Dubai in the UAE, Paris in France, and Daegu City in South Korea.

The deal marks a notable one for Luminar given it’s on the cusp of a public market debut through a reverse merger with a blank-check firm, Gores Metropoulos. The merger is expected to add hand over $570 million in cash to Luminar to fund its operations. It’s such that a deal with Mobileye could cheer up prospective investors that are awaiting Luminar’s debut on the public market.

With a Mobileye deal, Luminar now has a total of 50 commercial partners who are crucial to its business. Before now, the company clinched lidar supply deals with automakers including Volvo and Daimler.

Luminar as a company was founded in 2012. Since then, it’s grown to become a major maker of lidar sensors, which are the sensors usually mounted on autonomous vehicles for measuring distances during movement. Lidar sensors are usually crucial to the operation of autonomous vehicles on which they are present.

Luminar is backed by over $250 million in venture funding from investors including Founders Fund, Moore Strategic Ventures, Palantir’s Peter Thiel, GoPro founder Nick Woodman, and the automakers Volvo and Daimler. The company aims to complete its reverse merger and debut on the public market before the end of this year.

Photo: Luminar rooftop lidar concept | Luminar

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