{"id":1460,"date":"2025-10-17T22:12:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T18:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/ex-lidar-ceo-makes-a-bid-to-reclaim-his-company\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T22:12:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T18:12:29","slug":"ex-lidar-ceo-makes-a-bid-to-reclaim-his-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/ex-lidar-ceo-makes-a-bid-to-reclaim-his-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-lidar CEO makes a bid to reclaim his company"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"photo

\n\tEx-Luminar CEO Austin Russell is trying to wrest back control of his company. | Image: Andrew J. Hawkins \/ The Verge\t<\/figcaption><\/p><\/figure>\n

Earlier this year, Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell abruptly resigned<\/a> from his position after it was revealed he was the target of an ethics inquiry. Now, the 30-year-old billionaire is trying to wrest back control of his old company, which made him a fortune by designing lidar sensors of self-driving cars. <\/p>\n

According to an SEC filing<\/a> (and first reported by TechCrunch<\/a><\/em>), Russell wants to acquire \u201c100% of the outstanding shares of the Class A Common Stock\u201d in Luminar under the auspices of his new company, Russell AI Labs<\/a>. The new company would still be publicly listed (Luminar went public through a reverse SPAC merger in 2020) and traded under the same \u201cLAZR\u201d ticker symbol. <\/p>\n

Russell says in the filing he was invited to acquire the company \u201cat the suggestion of certain shareholders and the invitation of certain members of the board of directors\u201d of Luminar. At the time, Luminar didn\u2019t explain the reason for Russell\u2019s departure, nor has it said whether the ethics inquiry turned anything up. <\/p>\n

After launching in 2017, Luminar\u00a0muscled its way to the front<\/a>\u00a0of the autonomous vehicle industry as a top maker of lidar systems,\u00a0a key technology<\/a>\u00a0that driverless cars use to sense the shapes and distances of objects around them. Luminar has sold sensors to\u00a0Mercedes-Benz<\/a>,\u00a0Volvo<\/a>,\u00a0Audi<\/a>,\u00a0Toyota Research Institute<\/a>,\u00a0Caterpillar<\/a>, and\u00a0even Tesla<\/a>, which has dismissed lidar sensors in favor of traditional cameras<\/p>\n

Russell founded his new venture in September along with Markus Schaefer, CTO of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, and Murtaza Ahmed, former managing partner at Softbank. Meanwhile, Luminar has encountered financial difficulties over the past year, has gone through several rounds of layoffs, and\u00a0was nearly delisted from the NASDAQ<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ex-Luminar CEO Austin Russell is trying to wrest back control of his company. | Image: Andrew J. Hawkins \/ The […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}