Lidar maker Luminar files for bankruptcy
investors.luminartech.comTBH, Luminar declaring bankruptcy was not on my bingo card for this year.
More color is here: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/15/lidar-maker-luminar-files-...
Apparently they owe $10M to Scale AI and $1M to Applied Intuition, among others. And Volvo ended up cancelling their contract.
Not entirely sure how/why the founder left in a hurry
Hardware business is hard...
It was previously about to IPO at $3.4B https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24277803
I wonder if Geely will give them an offer given it owns Volvo, formerly their largest customer?
I wonder if Volvo cancellation had something to do with videos showing Lidar permanently burning cellphone cameras.
Could be, could also be a show of no-confidence when the founder jumped ship