LiDAR News: Ouster, Aeva, ZF, Velodyne, SOS Lab

BusinessWire: Ouster raises $42M in a Round B funding. After launching its second generation of high-resolution lidar sensors in January, Ouster’s 12-month revenue has grown by 62%, with third quarter bookings up 209% year over year as customers adopt its sensors in key computer vision technologies. Ouster now counts over 800 customers across 15 markets, including Konecranes, Postmates, Ike, May Mobility, Kodiak Robotics, Coast Autonomous, the U.S. Army, NASA, Stanford University, and MIT University, as well as Chinese automation leaders idriverplus, WhaleAI, Hongjing Drive, and Qcraft.

Ouster has opened offices in Paris, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and Suzhou to expand global sales and customer service capabilities. The company has also expanded overseas production of its sensors with Benchmark, a contract manufacturer, to keep up with growing demand.

“Ouster’s digital lidar architecture gives us fundamental advantages that are winning over customers in every market we serve. Digital CMOS technology is the future of lidar and Ouster was the first to invent, build, patent, and commercialize digital lidar. Once our customers experience the resolution and reliability of these sensors at an affordable price, there’s no turning back to legacy analog lidar,” said Angus Pacala, CEO of Ouster.

Forbes quotes Derek Frome, Director of Marketing for Ouster: “In absolute numbers, we're projected to finish the year around a similar revenue number as Luminar, and about one-third the size of Velodyne—pretty incredible for only having been selling sensors for about 20 months versus more than 10 years for Velodyne.”

Yole Development names Ouster second highest in revenue in the “high resolution” category for lidar manufacturers, according to Ouster. The company has raised $140M to date, and will use its new funds to expand product development and international sales.

BusinessWire: Aeva and ZF announce a partnership where ZF would mass produce Aeva's FMCW LiDAR.

BusinessWire: Velodyne publishes another presentation updating about its business. The company reports a gross margin of 14% for its LiDAR sensors, despite a relatively fat price tag:

TheElec reports that SOS Lab is going launch its 2D LiDAR SL-2 aimed at factory automation in October. Next year, the company intends to launch a 3D solid-state LiDAR ML-1 aimed to autonomous market.