Lumotive raises $13m from USAA, Uniquest, Samsung Ventures

Lumotive, the developer of Light Control Metasurface (LCM™) beam steering chips that enables the next generation of 3D sensors, has announced that it secured additional investments of $13 million from its recent funding round.

The additional cash came from USAA, Uniquest, and Samsung Ventures.

With this, Lumotive now has over $56 million in total investments that is could use to further accelerate development of new projects and the delivery of optical semiconductor devices that will enable the next generation of lidar sensors.

Lumotive is currently working with over two dozen world-class companies to utilize the high-performance, small form factor, and low-cost advantages of LCM chips to develop next-generation lidar systems for autonomy, automation, and augmented reality (AR) markets.

“Disruptive approaches to enabling next generation lidar capabilities are imperative for important applications such as automotive safety,” said Michael Smith, Assistant Vice President, Corporate development at USAA.

Smith said that Lumotive’s all-silicon LCM solutions make lidar affordable and deployable for a wide range of uses.

With their investment, Smith expressed his excitement on working with Lumotive to help the company accelerate its product development and deployment efforts.

Lumotive’s innovative optical semiconductor chips is expected to disrupt the consumer and industrial segments of the 3D sensor market, according to Andrew Kim, President and CEO of Uniquest.

Just like Smith, Kim said that he is also very excited to form a long-term partnership with Lumotive as an investor and to represent the company and promote its products in South Korea.

Mark Fitzgerald, Director of Autonomous Vehicle Service at Strategy Analytics, said that having strategic investments made by prominent industry leaders in promising semiconductor startups like Lumotive is great a news for the mobility sensor sector.

The recent funding round acknowledges the foresight of Lumotive’s semiconductor-based product strategy and its potential to give the company a measurable time-to-market advantage, he added.

Dr.Sam Heidari, CEO of Lumotive, said that he is very pleased to have USAA and Uniquest join their family of brand name investors as they also ramp up to deliver disruptive semiconductors enabling Lidar 2.0 —a crucial 3D sensing technology for diverse, consumer, automotive, and industrial markets.

Heidari said their LCM chips are uniquely positioned to address the broad range of perception and safety requirements across those sectors.

The additional investment that they received is expected to accelerate the deployment of the current generation of their LCM chips and the development of their next generation product.