Ex-lidar CEO makes a bid to reclaim his company
Earlier this year, Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell abruptly resigned from his position after it was revealed he was the target of an ethics investigation. Today, the 30-year-old billionaire is trying to regain control of his former company, which made him his fortune by designing lidar sensors for autonomous cars.
According to a filing with the SEC (and first reported by TechCrunch), Russell wants to acquire “100% of the outstanding Class A common stock” of Luminar under the auspices of his new company, Russell AI Labs. The new company would still be publicly traded (Luminar went public through a reverse SPAC merger in 2020) and traded under the same ticker symbol “LAZR.”
Russell says in the filing that he was asked to acquire the company “at the suggestion of certain shareholders and at the invitation of certain members of the board of directors” of Luminar. At the time, Luminar did not explain the reason for Russell’s departure, or indicate whether the ethics investigation had revealed anything.
Russell founded his new company in September with Markus Schaefer, CTO of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, and Murtaza Ahmed, former managing partner of Softbank. Meanwhile, Luminar has struggled financially over the past year, experienced several rounds of layoffs, and was nearly delisted from the NASDAQ.
