Lumotive, which is developing its Light Control Metasurface (LCM) beam steering chips, says it has secured a round of strategic funding led by Samsung Ventures. The investment includes contributions from new, strategic investors such as Himax Technologies, as well as Bill Gates, Quan Funds and MetaVC Partners.
Lumotive is planning to use the funding to accelerate the development and customer delivery of optical semiconductor devices that enable the next generation of lidar sensors. More than two dozen companies are currently engaged with Lumotive to utilize the high-performance, small-form-factor LCM chips to develop next-generation systems for autonomy, automation and augmented reality (AR) markets.
“Our optical semiconductor solutions are making it possible for a number of markets to quickly and cost-effectively implement advanced sensing capabilities in industry-changing products,” said Dr Sam Heidari, CEO of Lumotive. “With the LCM technology, Lumotive is uniquely positioned to be able to address the broad range of requirements across consumer, automotive and industrial sectors. Samsung Ventures is well known for identifying companies with disruptive technologies. We are very excited to partner with them as we deliver scalable products enabling Lidar 2.0 across diverse market segments by addressing power, cost and size requirements of consumer products as well as the performance needs of automotive products.”