Lyft to launch Mobileye-powered robotaxis
Lyft plans to bring fully autonomous robotaxis, powered by Mobileye, to their app “as soon as 2026” in Dallas, Texas, with more markets to follow. The news came a day before Lyft reported their Q4 financial results, coinciding with Waymo’s preparations to launch a commercial robotaxi service with Uber in Austin, Texas and, later, in Atlanta, Georgia.
RoboSense forecasts 2024 annual revenue surge
RoboSense released their earnings forecast, predicting annual revenue of between C¥1.63bn and C¥1.67bn in 2024, indicating a year-on-year growth of approximately 45.5 to 49.1 per cent. They anticipate a net loss attributable to shareholders of around C¥430m to C¥520m, representing a reduction of about 88 to 90.1 per cent versus the same period in 2023.
Lumotive mulls opportunities after series B funding
Lumotive, the US-based optics startup that has developed beam-steering metasurfaces for applications including 3D sensing and lidar, has raised $45m in a series B venture funding round. Lumotive received support from new investors including Swisscom Ventures, East Bridge, EDOM, Grazia, Hokuyo, and TSVC. Lumotive said the oversubscribed round also saw the return of existing investors including Gates Frontier, MetaVC Partners, Quan Funds, USAA, and HiMax.
Forvia Hella moves Asia HQ to New Shanghai Office
Forvia Hella has moved their Asian headquarters, comprising the Hella Corporate Center Asia and Hella Trading (Shanghai), to the Fu Building at Forvia’s China Headquarters in Shanghai’s Minhang District. This will facilitate collaboration across the different business groups and create greater synergies while maintaining operations as an independent company. The move was made to improve agility in responding to market dynamics, promote resource sharing, and strengthen the company’s ability to deliver exceptional services to the dynamic Chinese market, they have said.
Hesai deepens collaboration with BYD
Hesai Technology has expanded their intelligent-driving partnership with BYD. Large-scale production and vehicle integration are set to commence shortly. By 2025, over ten BYD models will be equipped with Hesai lidars. In 2024, BYD once again led the global new energy vehicle market, achieving sales of 4.27 million units, a year-on-year increase of 41.26 per cent. BYD is making significant strides in intelligent mobility, with Chairman and President Wang Chuanfu announcing a C¥100bn investment to advance integrated vehicle intelligence.
Omnitron in series A funding for MEMS development
Omnitron Sensors has raised over $13m in series A funding led by Corriente Advisors, with L’attitude Ventures also participating. This investment will expand Omnitron’s engineering and operations teams to speed the production of their first product, an affordable MEMS step-scanning mirror. Omnitron streamlines MEMS sensor production, enabling critical applications in AI data centers, long-range lidar for autonomous vehicles, XR headsets, and precision laser spectrometry for methane detection.
PIC Market to Balloon by ’35: IDTechEx
Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are tiny optical systems manufactured with technology used in the electronic integrated circuit industry. The importance of PICs in high-speed communication within artificial intelligence data centers is leading to rapid growth in demand for PIC-enabled transceivers to help machine learning models grow ever larger. Anticipation of the skyrocketing requirement for AI data centers is the key to IDTechEx’s prediction in their latest report, “Silicon Photonics and Photonic Integrated Circuits 2025-2035: Technologies, Market, Forecasts,” that the PIC market will reach $54bn by 2035.
Innoviz trims workforce to strive for profitability
Innoviz has announced an adjustment to their operations aimed at extending the company’s cash runway and enhancing progress towards profitability and free cash flow generation. The company will reduce focus on segments where development efforts have been completed. Consequently, the company’s workforce will be reduced by approximately 9 per cent. This realignment, along with other measures, is expected to result in cost savings of around $12m in 2025.
LeddarTech’s First LeddarVision OEM Design Win
LeddarTech has announced that a leading commercial-vehicle OEM has chosen LeddarVision for OE build into a 2028-model vehicle. Revenue from this partnership will start in 2025 for engineering services, with per-vehicle royalties expected by late 2027. The project begins immediately, pending final agreements.
Bosch mm-wave radar shipments top 100m
Bosch’s 2024 cumulative global shipments of millimeter-wave radar exceeded 100 million units, of which over 30 million for the Chinese market. Bosch introduced their fourth-generation mm-wave radar to China in 2014, with first application in Geely vehicles for single-radar automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems. Bosch noted that this technology laid a foundation for the proliferation of autonomous driving functionalities and significantly boosted demand for millimeter-wave radars in the Chinese market.
