Lidar maker Luminar declares bankruptcy

Lidar company Luminar filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection months later Layoffsexecutive departures, and A Legal battle With its largest customer, Volvo.

The company aims to sell its lidar business during bankruptcy proceedings, and has already reached a deal to sell its semiconductor business. While the company will continue to operate during the bankruptcy process to “minimize disruption” to its suppliers and customers, Luminar will eventually cease to exist once it is complete.

“After a comprehensive review of our alternatives, the board has determined that a court-supervised sale is the best path forward,” Paul Ritchie, Luminar’s CEO, said in a statement. “As we navigate this process, our top priority is to continue to provide the same quality, reliability and service that our customers have come to expect from us.”

The bankruptcy case, filed in the Southern District of Texas on Monday morning, comes at the end of a turbulent year for a company that was valued at more than $3 billion when it announced… It went public in a reverse merger in 2020.

Luminar founder Austin Russell He abruptly resigned as CEO in May After the Code of Business Conduct and Ethics Investigation, he remained on the company’s board of directors. In October, he launched and created a new effort called Russell AI Labs Try to buy Luminar in full. (It is unclear whether Russell plans to pursue LiDAR assets in the bankruptcy case; representatives for the former CEO did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

Meanwhile, the company cut 25% of its workforce, its second layoff this year. Luminar’s CFO left the company, the company defaulted on a number of loans, and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation.

Luminar was also infected with Eviction lawsuit In October in one office and that I got out of the lease Another in November.

Another big blow came in November when Volvo, an early backer of Luminar and its biggest customer this year, It canceled a five-year contract with the lidar maker. Luminar said it had taken legal action against Volvo over the divestment, but had also been hit with a legal claim of its own from the contract manufacturer that already made the lidar sensors.

Luminar claims to have assets between $100 million and $500 million and liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion, according to bankruptcy filings. Among those liabilities is a $10 million debt owed to Scale AI, which was helping Luminar classify data. Luminar also owes more than $1 million to artificial intelligence software company Applied Intuition.