Luminar Skyrockets After Nvidia Chooses Its Lidar For Autonomous Vehicle Platform

Shares of Luminar Technologies, Inc. LAZR are soaring Tuesday, rising to the highest level since early June.

What Happened: Florida-based Luminar, a manufacturer of automotive lidar hardware and software, said Nvidia Corporation NVDA has selected its lidar solutions to be part of the sensor suite in the Nvidia "DRIVE" Hyperion autonomous vehicle reference platform.

This AI vehicle computing platform accelerates development of autonomous consumer vehicles, with planned production starting in 2024, Luminar said.

DRIVE Hyperion, the company said, will use one forward-facing long-range Luminar Iris lidar in its Level 3 highway driving configuration.

Iris' custom lidar architecture is designed to meet the most stringent performance, safety and automotive-grade requirements to enable next-generation safety as well as assisted and autonomous driving on production vehicles.

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Why It's Important: Given the anticipated explosion in EV growth, the Nvidia deal is likely to be a major growth driver for Luminar in the near- to medium-term.

"The common thread between our two companies is that our technologies are becoming the de facto solution for major automakers to enable next-generation safety and autonomy. By taking advantage of our respective strengths, automakers have access to the most advanced autonomous vehicle development platform," said Austin Russell, founder and CEO of Luminar.

Gary Hicok, senior vice president of engineering at Nvidia, said: "Our collaboration with Luminar bolsters the DRIVE ecosystem of companies that are focused on building best-in-class technologies for enabling autonomous driving functionalities."

LAZR Price Action: In premarket trading, Luminar shares were jumping 49.71% to $26.20. 

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