Autonomous driving. Luminar: bankruptcy filing for the pioneering Lidar startup

End of the race for Luminarthe American startup that worked on spreading the technology Lidar as a semi-autonomous and autonomous driving assistance tool. Founded in 2012over the years it had collected huge investments from partners such as Nvidia, Nissan and the Geely group, reaching a peak capitalization of well 12 billion dollarsof which very little remains today. With the collapse of more than 99.8% of its shares since the date of its listing on the stock exchange, today Luminar is close to delisting from the New York Stock Exchangeand has filed for Chapter 11 in the United States, an equivalent of ours controlled administration. A process initiated not to restore the company, but as stated in a note circulated among investors, to repay debts by selling the most valuable assets belonging to the company. One above all the lucrative one semiconductor divisionwhich will be sold to Quantum Computing Inc for 110 million dollars, while the one dedicated to Lidar has not yet publicly found a buyer. Also according to the investor report, all sales of company assets are expected to be completed by January 2026.

Causes of failure

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The CEO of Luminar, Paul Ricci, declared that the company’s accounts would be affected by the debts left by the previous administration and a slower pace of adoption of Lidar by homes than expected. More specifically, the fate of the Luminar would have been sealed in advance listing on the stock exchange in December 2020, benefiting from the “Spac” formula, which given the particular historical moment offered very permissive conditions, opening the doors to financial exploits based on future prospects, rather than on the fundamentals normally underlying traditional IPOs. Thus, the company reached an extreme price point based on expectations that were not met in time, causing the shares to plummet. It would have been the final blow to Luminar cancellation by Volvo of an important orderoriginally formulated to equip the EX90 and ES60 with Lidar produced by the US startup. An unfortunate alliance, which left both parties dissatisfied. On the one hand, Luminar complains of having run into difficulties due to thepostponed entry of the Volvo EX90 on the marketdue to software problems, and then due to the reduction in demand by the company, which would have revised downwards the purchase forecasts for the Iris model Lidar Luminar. To further aggravate, the refusal by Polestar, another company of the Geely group, to adopt Luminar technologies on its new cars. On the other hand, Volvo in November 2025 he announced through an official note that he had terminated commercial relations with Luminar to limit its exposure to supply risk due to the adoption of the startup’s technologies, which would not have respected the contractual obligations agreed with Volvo. Thus, already from the second half of 2025 the Swedish company began to market EX90 models without Lidar, making it a paid optional, and then removing it completely with the 2026 model year.

Luminar technology

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What initially made Luminar’s proposals in the field of autonomous driving very attractive was the proprietary technology applied to Lidar. Technology that, in short, works “shooting” millions of laser beams in front of itwhich then bounce off surrounding objects and return to the sensor. The system calculates how much time elapsed between sending and returning the signalthus defining the distance from surrounding objects to create a three-dimensional “point cloud”. The aim is to paint a clearer picture of the surrounding environment, so that autonomous driving technology can be more precise and above all no drops in effectiveness in conditions of absolute darkness. An “extreme” example which, however, is effective could be this: by painting a wall in such a way as to make it look like a road, in some particular circumstances it would be possible to deceive a self-driving car based only on cameras, which would see the wall as if it were a road, while the Lidar would immediately notice the absence of depth, perceiving the wall as such. Lidar technology has existed since the 1960s in various applications, while the one carried out by Luminar is an evolution of this concept strictly designed for use in the automotive field. By adopting detectors in Indiogallo-Arseniuro, it can work with a wavelength of 1,550 nanometerswhich guarantees greater performance than standard schemes, and adopts a single laser, to minimize the number of pixels used and therefore reduce the number of components needed compared to systems with multiple laser diodes. According to Luminar, its Lidar technology would have guaranteed the safety of the eyes of passers-byworking on a frequency that would not damage the human retina, as well as less disturbance in rain, dust or solar interference.

Lidar today

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There are numerous other cars that support their self-driving tools via Lidar technology. Mercedes-Benz And BMWfor example, they use it in the case of their cars with level 3 autonomous driving, the S-Class and Eqs with Drive Pilot for the Star manufacturer, and the 7 Series with Personal Pilot L3 for the Bavarian manufacturer. The suppliers are Valeo and Innoviz respectively. There are also several Chinese manufacturers active in this field, such as No, XPeng and some brands from the Geely galaxy, such as Zeekr and Lotus, which rely on local companies such as RoboSense. Stay out of the Lidar game Teslawhich continues the development of its Autopilot using systems based on cameras Tesla Vision. A company strategy explained by the CEO, Elon Musk: “Lidar and radar reduce safety due to the conflict between sensors. This sensor ambiguity causes an increase, not a decrease, in risk. This is why Waymos cannot drive on the highway. We have deactivated the radars in Teslas to increase safety. The cameras win.” A statement released on his social network X, however very controversial among professionals.