Aeva, a Mountain View, Calif.-based lidar company founded by two former Apple engineers and backed by Porsche SE, is merging with special purpose acquisition firm InterPrivate Acquisition Corp., with a post-agreement market valuation of $ 2.1 billion.
The deal with InterPrivate, led by private equity investor Ahmed Fattouh, is expected to close by early 2021. Aeva is the latest company to abandon the traditional IPO path and go public via a SPAC merger. It is also the third lidar company, after Velodyne and Luminar, to take this path to public markets.
Lidar, or light sensing and measurement radar, measures distance. It is regarded by many in the emerging automated driving industry as a critical and necessary sensor. Velodyne has long dominated the lidar industry and supplied its products to most AV developers. Dozens of startups have sprung up in recent years with the aim of snatching market share from Velodyne, each offering their own variation on the technology and business approach.
Traditional lidar sensors are capable of determining distance by sending high-power pulses of light outside the visible spectrum and then monitoring how long each of those pulses takes to return. When they come back, the direction and distance at which those pulses are hit are recorded as a point and eventually form a 3D map.
Aeva founders Soroush Salehian and Mina Rezk developed what they call "4D lidar," which can measure instant distance and speed without losing range, all while preventing interference from the sun or other sensors. The company's FMCW technology also uses less energy, allowing it to fall back into the perception software. While the company's technology was developed primarily for use in autonomous vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems, Salehian says its technology is also piquing interest from those into consumer electronics.
"We see this transaction as an opportunity to accelerate our development efforts to scale our 4D LiDAR for production on next-level ADAS and automated guided vehicles, but also importantly, we separately saw significant interest in using the our chip-level LiDAR built on photonic silicon specific for consumer device applications where our technology can provide higher range capability, no degradation from sunlight and motion measurement, which ultimately opens up a new set of applications for Expanded AR / VR and beyond, "Salehian said in an email to ProWellTech. "As far as I know, Aeva is the only company that can provide such a LiDAR-on-chip technology that meets the high performance requirements of automotive applications and consumer devices at these price points. And we believe that now is the right time to seize these opportunities. "
Aeva's technology has allowed her to gain a number of partnerships and customers, as well as the support of Porsche Automobil Holding SE, the largest shareholder of the VW group. In September, Aeva announced a manufacturing partnership with Tier 1 manufacturer ZF to provide automotive grade 4D lidar.
The combined company will be renamed Aeva Inc. and is expected to continue to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and will be traded under the symbol "AEVA".
Aeva said it was able to raise $ 120 million in private investment in public capital, or PIPE, including investments from Adage Capital and Porsche SE. The combined company will provide approximately $ 363 million in gross proceeds, a figure that includes $ 243 million held in trust by InterPrivate and $ 120 million in PIPE. All Aeva shareholders, including Lux Capital, Canaan Partners and Lockheed Martin, will retain their shareholdings during Aeva's transition into the publicly traded company.