Luminar Technologies ($LAZR) has completed its merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), bringing the company public on the Nasdaq on Thursday.
The deal makes the 25-year-old founder and CEO Austin Russell one of the world's youngest billionaires and among the first in the emerging self-driving market.
The company specializes in what's called LIDAR or light detection and ranging technology, which is critical for self-driving cars to understand their surroundings.
"We built a custom sensor that can see and understand the world accurately and reliably around it in 3D by sending out laser pulses measuring the exact distance of different things down to centimeter-levels of precision," Russell told Cheddar. "This is critical for allowing an autonomous car to see and understand its environment and to be able to safely navigate it accordingly."
The company, which spent much of its eight-year history developing the technology, has more recently moved into commercialization. It now has more than 50 commercial partners, including seven of the top-10 automakers, according to Russell.
He added that Luminar has its sights on three main verticals: consumer vehicles, trucking, and robo-taxis.
Current deals include one with Volvo, which plans to release consumer vehicles using the technology for autonomous highway driving in 2022. Another is with Daimler Trucks, which will employ LIDAR tech for autonomous long-range trucking.
As for when self-driving cars will become more mainstream, Russell offered this perspective: "I think for self-driving cars you'll start to see it on the consumer vehicle and the trucking side, really at true large scale, by the end of the decade," he said, though the young entrepreneur conceded that this ultimately may be a "conservative timeline."
The SPAC, Gores Metropoulos, saw shares jump nearly 30 percent Thursday following the merger.
Edward Moya, chief market strategist with Oanda, joined Cheddar News to discuss Thursday's gains as investors were surprised by a jump in weekly job claims and as Wall Street braces for key inflation data and the Fed's latest policy announcement.
Rebecca Walser, financial planner and wealth strategist, offers some tips on how to bring everyday spending in line with budgets by avoiding certain purchases.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week rose to its highest level since October 2021, but the labor market remains one of the healthiest parts of the U.S. economy.
Stocks are drifting Thursday, continuing this week’s lull as Wall Street waits for several big events next week.
Apple's new iOS 17 has some promising upgrades in store for group chats. Previously, when a iMessage group chat contained an Android user, it would lose features such as text editing and threaded replies. Now group chats will retain those features, even when there is a "green bubble" in the mix.
Workers at the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan's Union Square, one of the retail chain's signature stores and home to its corporate offices, have voted to unionize.
U.S. and British cybersecurity officials warned Wednesday that a Russian cyber-extortion gang's hack of a file-transfer program popular with corporations could have widespread global impact. Initial data-theft victims include the BBC, British Airways and Nova Scotia's government.
Wilson Aerospace, a Colorado-based tools company with close ties to NASA, is suing Boeing for allegedly stealing trade secrets over the past two decades.
Apple recently acquired augmented reality company Mira following its launch of the Vision Pro headset. Cheddar News explains how Apple is looking to tap into the AR market long dominated by Meta.
Fiserv President and Chief Executive Frank Bisignano spoke to Cheddar News about what the transfer to the New York Stock Exchange means for his company and how Fiserve plans to use its partnership with the exchange in the fintech space. "We do believe that we could do a lot here creatively with the stock exchange," he said. "
