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PureTerra, a venture firm that aims to fund “disruptive water technologies,” is pumping millions into Membrion so the Seattle startup can mass-produce its wastewater treatment tech.

Membrion claims its ceramic membranes can filter out problematic heavy metals (not the genre, but toxic stuff like lead, arsenic and lithium) for around a twelfth of the cost of evaporative processes. Founder and CEO Greg Newbloom tells TechCrunch that he “wouldn’t recommend drinking the water we purify,” but the executive said the end result “can definitely be reused within an industrial facility,” without having to truck it off-site for treatment.

Membrion says its membranes can treat wastewater across a variety of industries, including fossil fuels, semiconductors, automotive and food and beverage production. “When we talk about ‘harsh wastewater,’ we mean wastewater that will literally burn your hand due to the pH and oxidizers present,” explained Newbloom. “These types of wastewaters cannot be treated with existing desalination membrane technology,” he added, so facilities today are stuck with “environmentally damaging alternatives,” such as boiling wastewater and using “single-use materials” to filter out harmful metals and salts.

The startup is in the process of raising its Series B amid climate-driven droughts. Heck, much of the West is abnormally dry or worse, even after record-setting storms that’ve hammered California in recent weeks.

Membrion says it’s secured $7 million so far, with a target of $10 million. PureTerra Ventures led the round, while investors such as Safar Partners, GiantLeap Capital and Freeflow also chipped in, per a press release.

“I anticipate that we’ll hit our [fundraising] goal within the next couple of months given the interest we have,” Newbloom told TechCrunch.

Wastewater recycler Membrion makes light work of removing heavy metals by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch

Ethereum’s shift from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in September 2022 increased interest in staking across a number of parties — including institutions.

The success of the Merge propelled Ethereum from “a smart contract platform lagging behind” into “something that was doing things right,” Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of Anchorage Digital, a crypto bank last valued over $3 billion, said to TechCrunch. “Interest from investors grew and the appetite changed dramatically.”

And it’s true: Institutional interest in ETH staking increased after the Merge, Matt Hougan, CIO at Bitwise Asset Management, said to TechCrunch.

“All of a sudden, by holding Ethereum, you went from holding a bet on smart contract platform to holding a bet that holds yield,” Mónica said.

Staking is a way of earning rewards for holding a certain token (in this instance, ETH) for a certain amount of time. In return for staking, people are paid out yield or additional rewards in exchange for holding their coins to secure the network.

In a way, it’s like having cash in your wallet or parking your cash in a bank CD, Hougan said. “You lock your money up in the CD and the bank pays you interest. In this example, you lock your ETH up in a staking pool and earn interest.”

Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake draws increasing institutional interest by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

The past few years have been a rollercoaster for the startup world’s herd of unicorns.

Two years ago, we saw a record number of companies cross the $1 billion valuation milestone. But that momentum slowed to a trickle last year, and this year’s market conditions look likely to reverse course to a point that we may witness some of those companies losing that status.

Down rounds are likely to become the norm this year as venture firms and investors look to bring valuations back to earth. We’ve already started to see some decacorns, like Stripe and Instacart, lowering their valuations, but they are so highly valued that they aren’t at risk of losing their unicorn status. But most unicorns don’t enjoy that luxury.

CB Insights’ unicorn index shows that there are 1,205 companies currently worth over $1 billion. But if you look closely, you’ll notice that the majority of these startups are actually hovering right at the $1 billion mark. Currently, 685 unicorns were last valued between $1 billion and $2 billion — that’s more than half the list.

How many of these will stay unicorns through this calendar year? To find out, we recently surveyed more than 35 investors on how many startups they thought would drop below the $1 billion valuation mark in 2023. While nobody could peg a specific number, of course, the vast majority felt the herd has likely already been winnowed.

Losing the horn: VCs think majority of unicorns aren’t worth $1 billion anymore by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

Sequoia Capital, a storied venture capital firm, announced today that it has raised $195 million for its fifth, dedicated seed fund. The vehicle will be used to back founders across the United States and Europe, as well as follow-on funding rounds for companies spinning out of the firm’s accelerator program, Arc.

The new fund comes alongside an expansion of Arc, Sequoia’s internal program that invests between $500,000 and $1 million into rising founders across the world. While the growing program is now advertised to have two cohorts in America and one in Europe, Latin American companies are welcome to apply as well. TechCrunch reached out to Sequoia for further comment and will update this piece accordingly.

The capital comes as the pre-seed and seed world, already a growing part of the startup ecosystem, becomes even more attractive to investors who want to steer clear of the turbulence of the later-stage market. AngelList data, released today, tells part of the story, noting that average seed-stage valuations hit $24 million last year, a decline of 13.9% compared with 2021. Median pre-seed valuations held consistent quarter over quarter, while later-stages, such as Series B, fell by nearly a third.

Jess Lee, a Sequoia partner and All Raise co-founder, said on Twitter that the firm will be looking at all verticals for potential outlier founders, but specifically called out artificial intelligence and consumer social as two areas she’s investing in.

In a blog post announcing the seed fund, other partners similarly hinted at areas of interest. Alfred Lin pointed to augmented reality and virtual reality as the makings of the “next consumer platform to drive wide-scale innovation,” while Shaun Maguire said that “hardware will always have my heart.”

Roelof Botha, the recently-appointed global head of Sequoia, kept it simple: he said in the post that he’s looking for founders who are taking advantage of a more disciplined market, and the decreasing cost of automation, artificial intelligence, and even genetic sequencing.

Sequoia, like many firms, has seen its portfolio humbled during the downturn, which may impact how partners are handling due diligence and sourcing in the year ahead. Just this past week, Sequoia-backed company GoMechanic cut 70% jobs, with its founder admitting in a LinkedIn post that the outfit made “grave errors in judgment as we followed growth at all costs.”

Other Sequoia portfolio companies with sizable cuts include Bounce, Ola, and well, FTX. Indeed, Sequoia’s $200 million investment in FTX has brought fair criticism to the firm’s decision-making track record.

Lin, who TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos interviewed last week at her StrictlyVC event, said the experience hasn’t soured Sequoia’s interest in crypto. Though he said that just 10% of Sequoia’s crypto fund has been deployed one year after it was launched, he added that Sequoia remains “long-term optimistic” about crypto.

Sequoia injects $195 million into an ever-eager seed environment by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

Understanding the biodiversity of forests is crucial to their conservation or restoration. Collecting “external DNA” left behind by animals is a good way to find out what lives there without having to spot them or even be there at the same time — and this drone from Swiss researchers makes taking samples from tree limbs safer and easier.

External DNA can come from lots of forms — dead skin or feathers, waste, fluids — and can be found in soil, water, or on surfaces like rocks and tree branches. Basically anywhere an animal might hang out, it leaves a trace of itself and we can detect that. Until recently this type of DNA amplification and analysis might have been too complex or expensive, but the tools to do it have become much cheaper and easier to use.

There remains the matter of collecting the DNA, though, and while biologists can certainly collect soil and water samples or scrape the sides of trees, high-up limbs where birds, small mammals, and insects live their whole lives are inaccessible without special equipment. Try telling your department head you need an extra $20K to get a tree-climbing team because their wasn’t enough guano on the forest floor.

The adventurous roboticists at ETH Zurich have come up with a clever method of sampling external DNA from tree branches that can easily be done from the ground. In a paper published in Science Robotics, they propose a drone-based solution: an aerial robot that can fly up to high branches and snag samples from them without damaging the branch or itself.

The drone looks a bit like a modernist light fixture, with a beautifully crafted wood frame and plastic shielding, and strips of adhesive tape or “humidified cotton” mounted on its lower surfaces. After being guided to a generally favorable position, it hovers above a branch to be sampled and monitors any movement like swaying or bouncing, synchronizing its approach. When it makes contact, it pushes with enough pressure to cause loose eDNA materials to transfer to the strips, but not so much that it pushes the branch out of the way. Essentially, it leans on the tree.

The initial outings with the drone in the arboretum surrounding the institute (we know a lot about forests right by universities, just as we know a lot about the psychology of undergraduates), the team was able to identify dozens of species of plants and animals (as well as microorganisms). That they collected much more before it rained than after suggests the method finds recent presence, which can be helpful or limiting depending on what a project needs.

The team plans to continue working on the drone, letting it go further into trees or higher up, or adjusting its collection technique to work in different circumstances.

“Our results pave the way for a generation of robotic biodiversity explorers able to survey eDNA at different spatial and temporal scales,” write the researchers. “By allowing these robots to dwell in the environment, this biomonitoring paradigm would provide information on global biodiversity and potentially automate our ability to measure, understand, and predict how the biosphere responds to human activity and environmental changes.”

You can see the drone in action below:

This gentle drone collects loose DNA from swaying tree branches by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

Wikipedia, one of the world’s top 10 most visited websites, and a resource used by billions every month, is getting its first makeover on the desktop in over a decade. The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the Wikipedia project, announced today the launch of an updated interface aimed at making the site more accessible and easier to use with additions like improved search, a more prominently located tool for switching between languages, an updated header offering access to commonly used links, an updated table of contents section for Wikipedia articles, and other design changes for a better reading experience.

The interface has already been launched on hundreds of language versions of Wikipedia in recent weeks, but is now rolling out to English Wikipedia, it said.

The changes being introduced are not very dramatic — in fact, they may not even be immediately noticed by some users. The organization, however, says the update was necessary in order to meet the needs of the next generation of Internet users, including those who are more newly coming online and may have less familiarity with the Internet.

To develop the new interface, the foundation engaged with over 30 different volunteer groups from around the world, with users in places like India, Indonesia, Ghana, and Argentina, among others, all helping to test the update and provide insights into the product development. The goal for the update was to make Wikipedia more of a modern web platform, it said, and to remove clutter, while also making it easier for users to contribute. It additionally aimed to make the desktop web version more consistent with Wikipedia’s mobile counterpart.

Among the changes is a newly improved search box that now uses both images and descriptions in its autocomplete suggestions that appear as you type to help direct users to the article you need. This change, like many being introduced, is relatively small but offers a visual clue that could speed up searches and make them more helpful. The Wikimedia Foundation said this update led to a 30% increase in user searches when it was tested — a reminder that even minor changes can have larger impacts on a product’s real-world use.

Another change involves an updated sticky header, where you’ll find commonly used links like Search, the Page name, and Sections that moves with you as you scroll down, staying pinned to the top of the page. That means you’ll no longer have to scroll back up to the top to find what you’re looking for, allowing users to stay focused on reading or editing the content instead.

Again, this seems like a smaller tweak but one that decreased scroll rates by more than 15% during tests — something that may be helpful to those who spend a lot of time on Wikipedia navigating between pages and sections, though it largely addresses an annoyance with the site, more so than any real problem. The tests also found that edits people started using the edit button in the sticky header were reversed less often than those initiated through other edit buttons on the page.

Language-switching tools were previously available but are now bumped up to a new, more prominent position at the top right, allowing readers and editors to switch between over 300 supported languages. This could be helpful in emerging markets where multi-lingual users want to access pages from other languages, at times.

The new table of contents section on the left side of articles, which helps people navigate through longer content, will now remain visible as you scroll down the page and helps you to see which section you’re currently reading. This makes it easier to jump around, moving in between various parts of the article as you further investigate a topic. Again, helpful but not world-changing.

Other changes to the site include the addition of a collapsible sidebar for a more distraction-free reading experience and a change to the maximum line width. The foundation explained that limiting the width of long-form text makes for a more comfortable reading experience and improves retention of the content. However, a toggle is available for logged-in and logged-out users on every page if the monitor is 1600 pixels or wider, allowing users to increase the width of the page. Logged-in users can also set a width in their preferences page.

The default font size was also increased for better reading comfort.

Given the size of Wikipedia’s readership, it’s clear the organization was careful not to make disruptive changes. Today, Wikipedia offers over 58 million articles across more than 300 languages, which are viewed nearly 16 billion times every month, it said. The announcement also noted that no existing functionality was removed as a part of these changes — instead, the focus of the update was on usability improvements and modernizing the site.

The makeover, which is also known as “Vector 2022” — a reference to the name of the default Wikipedia skin (Vector — and yes, there are others!) — had been in the works for three years and had been slowly rolled out across the Wikipedia platform ahead of today. As of December 2022, Vector 2022 was the default skin for around 300 Wikipedias globally, and became the default on Arabic and Greek Wikipedias.

Today, the update is live on 94% of the 318 active language versions of Wikipedia for all desktop users and is rolling out to English Wikipedia on the desktop.

Wikipedia gets its first makeover in over a decade…and it’s fairly subtle by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Wallapop, a peer-to-peer marketplace based out of Barcelona that made a splash at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic with consumers who were looking for more localized, less wasteful, and more eco-friendly routes for buying and selling items, has raised more money to continue its expansion in Europe.

The company has picked up €81 million ($87.4 million), which it will be investing into its operations in Spain, Italy and Portugal after seeing its 2.4 million downloads in the first half of the year in Italy (a newer market for the app) and a 600% increase in cross-border activity between Spain and Italy in that period. The company also plans to put more into data science and other areas of R&D — critical given that discovery, personalization and other tools to connect buyers with items they want is critical to people coming back and using Wallapop again and again.

The company is describing this as an extension to its Series G — a $191 million round that it raised in February 2021. That was before the bottom fell out of the tech market (and investing dropped along with it), so it is notable that Wallapop has raised here. Its valuation is up, but only in line with the amount being put in. It says that the figure now stands at €771 million, compared to €690 million previously. (In terms of USD, that works out to $832 million at current rates, which is actually lower than its previous dollar-value valuation, because the euro is significantly weaker right now against the dollar.)

This is an inside round, meaning all investors were already backers of Wallapop, which is not uncommon at the moment: the market is tough right now and so it makes sense to turn to existing investors to shore up capital. The latest investment is being led by Naver, the Korean internet company, and Naver’s European investment partner Korelya Capital, which were both in the original Series G. Accel, 14W and Insight are also participating. Naver — the company behind messaging app Line and other holdings — has been making efforts to expand its reach beyond Korea, most notably buying second-hand apparel player Poshmark in the U.S. for $1.2 billion last year.

Spain is Wallapop’s home market, but it’s been gradually using that as an anchor to go into adjacent countries, with Italy launching in 2021 and Portugal in September 2022.

The company’s growth is a useful barometer of just how enduring circular economy marketplaces can be: buying and selling items from other private owners took on a new profile when Covid-19 was in full bloom: people did not want to go to stores as much, and some couldn’t because stores were closed; but also consumers were becoming more conscientious of how they were spending their money (not least because many were losing jobs or getting furloughed), and the swing away from the normal pace of modern life left many thinking about how they could potentially live life to a different, perhaps less wasteful way.

Fast forward to today, and we’ve seen consumers shifting back into their old patterns: lots of single-passenger car traffic on roads; people flocking to physical stores (and using less e-commerce services); and in many cases less community engagement than they were willing to have during lockdowns and urgent requests to stay close to home.

There are signs that Wallapop is sustaining its growth, despite those shifts. It said that its 2022 financial year had revenues of €72 million, up 40% on FY 2021. Meanwhile, Wallapop Envíos, its end-to-end shipping service (versus users seeing to sending off packages themselves), grew to €32 million from €17 million in that period. Subscription services — a service that it offers to professional sellers — brough in €10 million in revenes, up from €6.7 million in 2020. They are signs not just of the maturing of the platform, but also of how the company is also trying to diversify how it makes money.

“In the past years, Wallapop’s expansion efforts have allowed more and more people to benefit from our fundamental purpose -facilitating a more conscious and human way of consumption that creates economic opportunities for people- which in today’s socio-economic environment remains as relevant as ever,” said Rob Cassedy, CEO of Wallapop, in a statement. “We are focused on driving the reusing revolution within Southern Europe, prioritizing a healthy growth model that allows us to increase our impact while we scale and create a unique inventory ecosystem that can continue expanding further in our future. Our investors, NAVER and Korelya as well as others, share our vision.”

Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made that circular economy remains niche for now. It’s been 10 years since Wallapop was founded, and currently it only sees traffic of 15 million monthly active customers across 100 million listings (that is the number in aggregate over the year, not at any given time). I’ll also point out that the 15 million figure was the same number of users it had in 2021 when I covered the original Series G.

The company did not provide any comment from its investors. We’ve reached out to ask for this and will update when and if we get more. More generally, Naver is a strong player in e-commerce and apps in its home market and it has been making a number of moves to increase its holdings internationally, including with that Poshmark acquisition.

Wallapop, the circular marketplace out of Spain, raised $87M more at a $832M valuation led by Korea’s Naver by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

“Rebel Moon,” Netflix’s highly anticipated space fantasy epic, is coming to the streamer on December 22, 2023, the company announced today, alongside a sizzle reel of over a dozen titles that are also arriving on the streamer this year.

The sizzle reel shows a first look at the sci-fi adventure film, giving viewers a glimpse at the star-studded cast, crazy action sequences, explosives and a quick yet steamy make-out sesh between “Kingsman: The Secret Service” actress Sofia Boutella (who plays Kora) and “Sons of Anarchy” actor Charlie Hunnam (character yet-to-be-named).

The movie is set in a colony on the edge of the galaxy that’s threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius (played by Ed Skrein). The peaceful colony sends Kora out to neighboring planets to recruit warriors that can help them. “Rebel Moon” also features Anthony Hopkins as the voice of a sentient battle robot named Jimmy, Djimon Housou as General Titus, Ray Fisher as Blood Axe, Jena Malone, Bae Doona, Cary Elwes, Corey Stoll and more.

“Army of the Dead” director Zack Snyder first announced “Rebel Moon” back in July of 2021, tweeting out teasers every so often like new cast members and behind-the-scenes images. So, it’s about time it gets an official release date.

It’s clear that Synder is a “Star Wars” fan, as the upcoming movie appears to take a lot of inspiration from the hugely popular franchise. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder first pitched “Rebel Moon” to Lucasfilm as a potential “Star Wars” movie over ten years ago before Disney acquired the production company in 2012. Synder has since signed a first-look deal with Netflix.

Synder also told the publication that he hopes “Rebel Moon” turns into “a massive IP and a universe that can be built out.” It wouldn’t be surprising if “Rebel Moon” became a franchise as Netflix is known for investing heavily in its content, focusing on over-the-top action films and hiring A-list actors to draw in a big crowd. Currently, Netflix has a “The Gray Man” universe in the works.

Other titles coming to Netflix later this year include the comedy movie “You People,” “Murder Mystery 2” with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, the romance movie “Your Place or Mine” and “The Mother” starring Jennifer Lopez, among many others.

Zack Snyder’s ‘Rebel Moon’ is set to arrive on Netflix in December by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Email marketing and newsletter giant Mailchimp says it was hacked and that dozens of customers’ data was exposed. It’s the second time the company was hacked in the past six months. Worse, this breach appears to be almost identical to a previous incident.

Mailchimp said in an unattributed blog post that its security team detected an intruder on January 11 accessing one of its internal tools used by Mailchimp customer support and account administration, though the company did not say for how long the intruder was in its systems, if known. Mailchimp said the hacker targeted its employees and contractors with a social engineering attack, in which someone uses manipulation techniques by phone, email or text to gain private information, like passwords. The hacker then used those compromised employee passwords to gain access to data on 133 Mailchimp accounts, which the company notified of the intrusion.

One of those targeted accounts belongs to e-commerce giant WooCommerce. In a note to customers, WooCommerce said it was notified by Mailchimp a day later that the breach may have exposed the names, store web addresses and email addresses of its customers, though it said no customer passwords or other sensitive data was taken.

WooCommerce, which builds and maintains popular open-source e-commerce tools for small businesses relies on Mailchimp for sending emails to its customers. WooCommerce is said to have more than five million customers.

If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it is. Last August, Mailchimp said it was the victim of a social engineering attack that compromised credentials of its customer support staff, granting the intruder access to Mailchimp’s internal tools. In that breach, data on some 214 Mailchimp accounts were compromised, mostly of cryptocurrency and finance-related accounts. Cloud giant DigitalOcean confirmed that its account was compromised in the incident, and harshly criticized Mailchimp’s handling of the breach.

Mailchimp said at the time that it had implemented “an additional set of enhanced security measures,” but declined to tell TechCrunch what those measures entailed. With a near-identical repeat of its past breach, it’s not clear if Mailchimp properly implemented those enhanced measures, or if those measures failed.

Intuit, which bought Mailchimp for $12 billion in 2021, did not respond to an email by TechCrunch on Wednesday, which included questions about the incident. It’s not immediately clear who, if anyone, is responsible for cybersecurity at Mailchimp following the departure of its chief information security officer Siobhan Smyth shortly after the August breach.

Mailchimp says it was hacked — again by Zack Whittaker originally published on TechCrunch

That nagging deja vu feeling kept creeping in earlier this month during CES 2023 in Las Vegas.

At every turn, in the newly constructed West Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and even amid the crowded startup grinder at Eureka Park, was a company pitching lidar sensor technology.

That might not have been so remarkable in 2017 or 2018. But it’s 2023.

The peak of the hype cycle, when hundreds of millions of dollars were thrown into lidar startups, is a distant glint in the rearview mirror. The industry went through the business model pivot phase and rode the special purpose acquisition mergers wave in a pursuit of capital that public markets can provide.

How could so many of these lidar sensor companies — nearly two dozen by my count — still be hanging on (and spending considerable money to exhibit at CES) after a boom-and-bust cycle that led to a widespread culling?

Lidar, the light detection and ranging radar that measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world, is considered a critical sensor to support autonomous vehicles, and increasingly advanced driver assistance systems. As the optimism and gravitas surrounding autonomous vehicles reached new, dizzying heights, lidar was swept up in investment chaos.

Between 65 to 70 companies with active lidar programs existed in 2018, according to industry estimates. As the timelines around the deployment of autonomous vehicles slipped, consolidation seemed inevitable. And it was. Dozens of lidar companies have folded or been swallowed up by another competitor in the past four years.

Consolidation was already underway by 2019. It has only ramped up since. And that seek-capital-in-public-markets plan that took off in 2020 hasn’t been as fruitful as some hoped, due to the cost of development and that potentially inflated valuations were based on projected revenue, not actual revenue.

Of the nine companies that went public via SPAC mergers — a list that includes Aeye, Aeva, Cepton, Luminar, Innoviz, Ouster and Velodyne — there has been at least one bankruptcy and a merger. Quanergy filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2022 about 10 months after going public through a merger with a SPAC. Ouster, a SPAC that acquired Sense Photonics in 2021, agreed to merge with Velodyne in November 2022 in an all-stock transaction.

Lidar company Luminar said it’s able to verify 25 companies with active lidar programs, a figure in line with other estimates in the industry.

So where does that leave the industry today? Walking the floor of CES 2023 one might mistakenly assume that business is booming enough to sustain two dozen companies. It’s not.

Snow Bull Capital CEO Taylor Ogan expects many lidar companies will be sifted out this year and the “make it or break it year” for those that remain will be 2024.

“I think we will see the big OEMs make lidar commitments in 2023,” Ogan said, adding that a lot of models will be unveiled with lidar. “But 2024 will be the make-or-break year for lidar companies, where we will see whose fancy booths at CES were just that, and who is actually going to deliver.”

Today, about of 80% of lidar companies actually putting sensors in cars today are in Asia, according to Ogan.

China-based companies Hesai, Robosense and Livox all have design wins with automakers and have shipped sensors for production models in 2022. Hesai is at the top of the lidar sensor producer heap. The company has shipped more than 103,000 lidar units from 2017 to December 31, 2022, according to a recent securities filing.

However, the bulk of that production occurred in 2022 when it made and shipped more than 80,000 sensors. Of those, 62,000 Hesai units have gone to Chinese automakers including Li Auto, Jidu and Lotus to support advanced driver assistance systems. The remainder were used in other applications such as robotaxis, agriculture, mining, mapping and smart infrastructure. The pace of Hesai’s production is expected to ramp up this year. The company is opening a third factory in Shanghai this year with a capacity to produce 1 million units a year.

There are also handful U.S.-based companies that are producing and selling lidar sensors for robotics and industrial applications. And when it comes to U.S. lidar companies shipping sensors to production vehicles, that list gets even smaller.

Perhaps one of the buzziest companies is Luminar, a startup-turned-publicly traded company, that has operations in Florida and Silicon Valley. Luminar has started producing and shipping its Iris lidar sensors to SAIC Motor to support ADAS in the Chinese automaker’s new electric SUV, the Rising Auto R7. Its sensors are also headed to Volvo’s new electric EX90 SUV and the upcoming Polestar 3 SUV.

Luminar struck a deal in 2020 with Mobileye to supply the company with lidar for its robotaxi fleet. It has also landed contracts with Nissan and Mercedes. Based on its internal estimates, the company expects that by the second half of the decade (so after 2025) there will be more than 1 million Luminar-equipped vehicles out on the road, founder and CEO Austin Russell reiterated on stage at CES 2023.

There’s also Innovusion, a Silicon Valley based company with operations in Suzhou, China, that supplies Chinese automaker Nio with sensors.

While leadership positions can shift, industry experts still expect the field of lidar companies will continue to shrink.

The lidar industry will “directionally” start to look like the millimeter wave radar industry, Mike Ramsey, vp analyst of automotive and smart mobility at Gartner. Today, there are about seven or eight companies such as Aptiv, Bosch, Continental and ZF that supply automakers with millimeter wave radar.

“I can’t see why lidar for auto would be different, Ramsey said. He did add that lidar has more applications outside of auto, which may support a few additional companies.

Lidar companies face a ‘make it or break it’ year by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch