AUTONEWS

Lumotive Raises $45M For Chip Scale Light Management

Lumotive, a Washington based company backed by Bill Gates, recently announced an impressive $45M Series B raise (at a ~$200M valuation) to continue its journey in revolutionizing Light Control Metasurface (LCM™) technology for software definable scanning of laser beams. LCM™ enables non-mechanical scanning and chip-scale, solid state LiDAR. Participation from earlier investors (Gates Frontier, MetaVC Partners, Quan Funds, USAA, and HiMax Inc.) was supplemented by new investors Swisscom Ventures, East Bridge, EDOM, Grazia, Hokuyo Inc. and TSVC. It is interesting that one of the new investors, Hokuyo, is an industrial LiDAR powerhouse. At a time where existing LiDAR companies are increasingly finding it difficult to generate meaningful revenues and profitability, the raise by Lumotive is especially impressive.

More than 70 LiDAR companies have drawn $Bs of dollars of corporate and venture funding over the past decade. Many have been acquired or declared bankruptcy. The survivors continue to struggle with finding applications (automotive ADAS and autonomy are appealing but difficult, slow and expensive to penetrate) with the successful ones primarily based in China and powering the domestic EV and autonomy revolution. The LiDAR business is at a crossroads - the surviving players have matured the technology and products around mechanically scanned LiDAR which is expensive to produce and suffers from reliability, durability and high latency for ROI (Region of Interest) scanning. The assembly process requires precise placement and attachment of discrete opto-mechanical components which is expensive. Electronically scanned LiDAR using VCSEL (Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers) and SPAD (Single Photon Avalanche Diodes) arrays exist and are deployed in Apple smartphones, but are more expensive in higher performance applications because they require large areas of the VCSEL optical semiconductor fabric and precise alignment of discrete transmit and laser modules.

A new generation of LiDARs which are purely semiconductor-based are emerging, with Lumotive’s LCMs supporting the architecture in Figure 1 (Optical Phase Arrays and Optical Switch Arrays are other approaches, pioneered by companies like Analog Photonics and Voyant respectively). The lack of moving parts provides compact, low power consumption and high reliability solutions (especially in harsh environments of shock and vibration). Real-time re-configuration of operating parameters (like range and FoV) depending on the environment and application requirements is feasible. Semiconductor wafer-based manufacturing processes simplify the precision placement and testing of different optical components, resulting in lower cost, scalability and superior quality. All these advantages unleash new applications that were previously inaccessible for traditional LiDAR systems.

Figure 1: Lumotive LTM Schematic for Solid State LiDAR. Lumotive

Except for the laser chip, Lumotive’s Light Control Metasurface (LCM™) platform is based on a CMOS process. LCMs operate by packing thousands of tunable optical resonators onto the surface of a CMOS semiconductor chip. By tuning the characteristics of each resonator, a phase profile can be created across the surface of the chip which causes incident photons to be reflected in the desired direction. The LCM acts as a programmable, electronically controlled mirror with no moving parts.

Enabling Chip Scale LiDAR...Lumotive’s shift to industrial LiDAR occurred in 2021 with Dr. Sam Heidari joining as CEO. He is a seasoned semiconductor executive who has led companies like Quantenna Communications, helping it scale in revenues and products over the 2011-2019 time-frame. Quantenna was sold to ON Semiconductors (ON) in 2019 for $1.1B, with 2018 annual revenues of $220M.

Over the past 3 years, the company strategy has evolved from building LiDAR systems to supplying its LCM solid-state scanning chip to other companies for applications like LiDAR, free space optical communications (terrestrial and satcom) and optical switching in densely packed data centers. The solid-state aspect enables low latency beam direction control (in the order of microseconds) which is a boon for these applications. Elimination of moving parts provides compact, low power consumption and high reliability solutions (especially in harsh environments of shock and vibration).

According to Dr. Heidari, chip scale LiDAR enabled by the company’s LCM technology creates a paradigm shift whereby application specific software drives value rather than hardware alone. During CES 2025, Lumotive announced a collaboration to integrate its LCM product with Sony’s SPAD depth sensors, which “addresses the distinct needs of the automotive and industrial sectors, providing customers with a single, adaptable solution that delivers unmatched precision and reliability". Publicly announced customers for the LCM chip and LiDAR reference design include Hokuyo, E-Photonics and Namuga. Currently, a total of 30 customers are in the pipeline.

Customers and Applications for Chip Scale LiDAR...Hokuyo is a 75-year sensing and automation company based in Osaka, Japan. It has been in the laser scanning and LiDAR business for the past 20 years, primarily for safety and logistics applications in industrial environments. It is an investor in Lumotive and has a strong collaboration with the company for integrating the LCM into its current line of opto-mechanically scanned LiDARs. According to Koji Iwata

Manager, Marketing Strategy Department, the incorporation of the LCM has 3 main advantages - 35% lower weight, no acoustic noise (critical when humans are present) and longer lifetimes. Figure 2 shows the LCM integrated product which advertises “Lumotive Inside”, to emphasize the technology and financial partnership between the two companies. The product is currently being sampled to select customers.

Figure 2: Hokuyo Solid State Industrial LiDAR with "Lumotive Inside"Hokuyo

E-Photonics, based in Saudi Arabia, aims to use Lumotive’s LCM chip and LiDAR reference designs to develop and manufacture LiDAR products in its home country for industrial robotics and security applications. Mohamed Alghaith, is the founder and CEO of the company, and also heads up East Bridge Capital which is an investor in Lumotive. According to Mr. Alghaith, computer vision is the primary enabler of physical artificial intelligence (AI) and the fusion of smart LiDAR and HD cameras provides next generation computer vision which can capture events in complicated scenes and process those with minimal latency, and low energy and storage costs. Saudi Arabia hosts the Haj pilgrimage every year with ~2M devotees visiting over a 10-day period. The ability to monitor crowds for safety and medical considerations is critical and intelligent computer vision (HD cameras and adaptive LiDAR) are key enablers. The partnership with Lumotive “perfectly exemplifies our commitment to Saudi Vision 2030, bringing advanced technology capabilities that will create significant value and advance our region’s technological infrastructure”.

Namuga ("Vision Connectivity") was founded 20 years ago and currently provides computer vision solutions for personal devices like laptops, smartphones, and smart home appliances. It has annual revenues of ~$400M and is listed on the KOSDAQ (Korean NASDAQ). It currently ships ~130M camera modules into these applications, with ~25% of these into Samsung smartphones. Don Lee is the CEO and he feels strongly that SOT (Sensors of Things) is a critical enabler for physical AI in applications like mobility (robots, vehicles), security and perimeter access, wearables (AR/VR and smart glasses) and biomedical. The company developed iTOF (indirect Time-of-Flight) sensors with Sony in 2015, and these are integrated with their camera modules. With new applications emerging in the physical AI space, Mr. Lee believes that dToF (direct Time-of-Flight) capability is required. Lumotive’s solution is appealing since it enables high performance LiDAR in compact formats and without moving parts. The companies are collaborating on short and long range LiDAR modules called the Stella series that uses the LCM and Lumotive’s dToF LiDAR reference designs. According to Mr. Lee, "our collaboration with Lumotive brings unprecedented capabilities to the market. The Stella series demonstrates our commitment to delivering innovative sensing solutions that meet real-world deployment needs."

Advances in solid state light management and chip scale LiDAR are emerging, promising the ability for software definable, chip-scale 3D sensing. These advances are poised to disrupt traditional LiDAR products in various applications like robotics, transportation, defense, mining, agriculture, security and industrial robotics. The size, power, reliability and system integration advantages make it possible to integrate these systems with high performance CMOS cameras and create new opportunities like consumer wearables, AR/VR, drones, smart glasses and smartphones.

Sabbir Rangwala