Luminar Raises $100 Million in Fresh Funding, Unveils New Perception Platform Termed ‘Iris’

One of the emerging lidar development companies, Luminar,raises $ 100 million in its latest funding round, Tech Crunch reported.

According to the report, the latest funding round, which was recently closed by the company,involved many inventors including Crescent Cove Advisors, G2VP, Octave Ventures, Moore Strategic Ventures, strategic backers Corning Incorporated, Cornes, Peter Thiel’s investment group, GoPro founder Nick Woodman, Westly Group, 1517 Fund.

Cornes will help Luminar to foray into the Asian market and help creating auto-grade and lidar-friendly Gorilla Glass windows and other components, the report said.

It is estimated that by 2026, Luminar would be worth $556.67 billion as it is planning to expand its current portfolio of products.

The San- Francisco based company launched a perception platform dubbed as Iris. The platform is priced at $1,000 per unit for production vehicles seeking serious autonomy. Customers can pay an additional $500 to reap other benefits such as driver assistance, or ADAS; which are included for a limited time.

According to the company, the platform would be commercially rolled out in 2022.

“The development stage is a huge undertaking — to actually move it towards real-world adoption and into true series production vehicles,” said one of the top level executive of Luminar (among many other things).