Former lidar CEO makes bid to take back his company

Earlier this year, Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell He resigned suddenly He was removed from his position after it emerged that he was the target of an ethics investigation. Now, the 30-year-old billionaire is trying to regain control of his old company, which made him a fortune by designing lidar sensors for self-driving cars.

According to an SEC filing (It was reported for the first time TechCrunch), Russell wishes to acquire “100% of the outstanding shares of Class A common stock” of Luminar Corporation under the auspices of his new company, Russell Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence. The new company will remain publicly listed (Luminar went public via a reverse SPAC merger in 2020) and trade under the same ticker symbol “LAZR.”

Russell says in the filing that he was invited to take over the company “at the suggestion of some shareholders and the invitation of some members of the Luminar Board of Directors.” At the time, Luminar did not explain the reason for Russell’s departure, nor did he say whether the ethics investigation had uncovered anything.

Russell founded his new venture in September with Markus Schäfer, CTO of Mercedes-Benz Group, and Murtaza Ahmed, former managing partner at SoftBank. Meanwhile, Luminar has faced financial difficulties over the past year, undergoing several rounds of layoffs, and… It was almost delisted from the Nasdaq.