Lidar manufacturer Velodyne plans IPO

Recently, sources revealed that lidar manufacturer Velodyne Lidar is about to go public and will cooperate with several investment banks including Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Canada and William Blair.

One of the sources said the company plans to go public by the end of 2019. Velodyne Lidar is valued at $1.8 billion after its last round of funding, and it hopes to be valued at more than that in a future IPO. Velodyne Lidar, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup declined to comment. Royal Bank of Canada and William Blair did not respond to requests for comment.

Velodyne Lidar is a manufacturer of laser radars used by self-driving cars. These devices can help self-driving cars detect objects around them. If it can complete the IPO as planned, Velodyne Lidar will become the first company in the field of autonomous driving technology to go public.

Many large automobile and technology companies have also invested heavily in autonomous driving technology, such as Waymo under Google, Cruise under General Motors, MobileEye under Intel, and Tesla, etc.

In May 2019, GM's autonomous driving division Cruise received $1.15 billion in investment from GM, SoftBank Vision Fund and Honda. After completing this round of financing, Cruise's valuation increased to $19 billion. In June 2019, it was reported that Apple acquired the autonomous driving startup Drive.ai. Through this transaction, Apple will be able to obtain more autonomous driving vehicle engineers. According to PitchBook data, before the completion of this acquisition, Drive.ai's valuation was $200 million.

Quanergy Systems is one of Velodyne Lidar's main competitors. The company had previously contacted investment banks and had originally planned to go public before August 2018, but according to Bloomberg, they later slowed down their IPO plans. Previously, there was a patent dispute between Quanergy and Velodyne, and the focus of the lawsuit was a technology called "High Definition Lidar System". At the end of May 2019, the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled that the patent belonged to Velodyne, but soon after, Quanergy said they would appeal the ruling.

In China, the autonomous driving industry is also developing through exploration. Companies in different fields, including Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Didi, Horizon Robotics, and NavInfo, are working hard to promote the implementation of autonomous driving. In August 2016, Baidu and Ford jointly invested $150 million in Velodyne Lidar, and the three parties will carry out all-round cooperation in the field of autonomous driving. Baidu is expected to provide more orders for Velodyne Lidar through the mass production of autonomous vehicles, thereby significantly reducing the cost of lidar.