Luminar Technologies, a lidar manufacturer, has hired Argo Lidar team engineers

Lidar maker Luminar Technologies has hired engineers from Argo's lidar team, foreign media reported. Argo is a defunct self-driving car technology company that was backed by Ford Motor and Volkswagen Group.

Luminar hired about 10 employees from Argo's lidar team, chief Financial Officer Thomas Fennimore said in an interview on May 9. Zach Little, formerly vice president of hardware and firmware at Argo, joined Luminar in December.

Image credit: Luminar

Argo was revealed in October to be going out of business as Ford and Volkswagen shift their autonomous vehicle strategies. Ford says it needs to invest in driver-assistance technologies that are easier to achieve in the short term, rather than Argo's goal of fully autonomous driving.

Lidar allows cars to "see" their surroundings and is a key component of some advanced autonomous driving features. As the number of Lidar startups dwindles amid industry consolidation, Luminar has been taking on staff from competitors like Tesla and Ouster.

Luminar's customers range from Volvo Cars to Mercedes-Benz. Luminar announced the expansion of its partnership with Mercedes-Benz in February. Under the new agreement, which follows the expanded collaboration, Mercedes will integrate Luminar's next version of Iris lidar into its upcoming driver assistance system.

Luminar reported first-quarter revenue of $14.5 million, beating the average estimate compiled by Bloomberg. Fennimore said Luminar expected its core hardware division to break even next year and the entire business to become profitable by 2025.

Source: NetEase