Moments before a bankruptcy judge was expected to approve the sale of Luminar’s lidar business, an unidentified party submitted an offer that apparently blew away the leading bid of $33 million.
This bid, which emerged just before a hearing Tuesday, kicked off a series of rapid-fire meetings between Luminar’s remaining leadership team and its lawyers, a “special transaction committee” formed to navigate the bankruptcy, and eventually the company’s full board.
While the bid was “substantially higher,” there were “infirmities” in the offer, according to a lawyer for Luminar. The company ultimately decided to stick with the $33 million bid it received from a company called MicroVision during an auction on Monday.
The identity of who submitted this long-shot offer was not revealed, but Luminar’s lawyer said it was an “insider purchaser,” meaning it likely came from company founder Austin Russell.
Russell had already tried to buy the company late last year before it slid into bankruptcy (and after he abruptly resigned as CEO). Representatives of his new firm Russell AI Labs previously told TechCrunch he was interested in submitting a bid on the lidar business during the bankruptcy case. (Those same representatives did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.)
The hearing moved forward, and the sale to MicroVision was approved. The sale of Luminar’s semiconductor division to a company called Quantum Computing Inc. was also approved.
The transactions are likely to close in the coming weeks, and after that, the company will cease to exist, bringing an end to one of the buzzier suppliers of the budding autonomous vehicle era.
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What MicroVision wants
Russell’s goal of using lidar to help cars drive themselves will continue on at MicroVision, though, according to its CEO Glen DeVos. As part of the asset sale, MicroVision will get Luminar’s lidar tech as well as its remaining staff, and he said he’s hopeful some of the other talent that was laid off prior to bankruptcy will come on board, too.
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