Luminar Technologies, Inc. recently filled out its leadership team with engineers who used to work for Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia as it looks to grow in the auto industry.
Luminar Technologies, the global leader in automotive lidar hardware and software technology, announced on May 25 several new additions to its technical leadership as it prepares for its expansion in the auto industry.
The new top talents joining the Luminar team are Taner Ozcelik, the founder of Nvidia’s automotive business, and CJ Moore, who served as director of Autopilot Software at Tesla and most recently a director of autonomous systems at Apple.
“With industry-defining technology and now nearly a dozen major commercial wins in hand, Luminar is ready for its next phase of leadership as we focus all-in on execution,” said Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell. “We’re attracting the best leaders in the world in their fields to execute our vision and deliver on the future of transportation.”
Taner Ozcelik
He is the founder of Nvidia’s automotive business. Joining Luminar as executive vice president and general manager, he will be responsible for R&D, product development, program management, IT, platform partnerships, and Luminar’s semiconductor subsidiaries. He recently worked as senior vice president and general manager at ON Semiconductor Corporation. He revolutionized the intelligent sensing business and led it to become the worldwide camera market leader in automotive and robotics, with revenues of around $1 billion.
CJ Moore
He is the former director of Tesla’s Autopilot software and director of autonomous systems at Apple. He will join the company as its vice president of software and lead the global software development team. He will be instrumental in advancing Sentinel, Luminar’s full-stack advanced safety and autonomous solution.
Luminar also announced that the company would add several more executives to the company, such as:
- Jackie Chen will be the head of China. He will be responsible for expanding the business in the Asian country. Chen served as President at Harman International. He also served as CTO and Automotive Division head at Schaeffler Group in China and the Asia Pacific.
- Rimjhim Dasgupta will join as chief of staff to EVP & GM and vice president of program management. She previously served as chief of staff in Intel’s Emerging Growth and Incubation Group. She held senior roles at Synaptics, Apple, and AMD.
- Jared Jacobs who will join as VP and head of manufacturing operations, and was a senior vice president and general manager of global electronics at ZF Group
- Anders Grunnet-Jepsen joined as head of advanced development after serving as chief technology officer for Intel’s RealSense Group.
- Chris Lubeck will join as head of intellectual property. Lubeck previously served as the chief IP counsel at Tesla and ServiceNow and served as counsel to Apple during the smartphone patent wars of the last decade.
The new high-profile executives will help Luminar speed up its growth with commercial partners and expand its autonomous software and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) solutions for automakers.
LUMINAR’S LIDAR
Luminar is a global automotive technology company ushering in a new vehicle safety and autonomy era. Accordingly, “lidar” means “light detection and ranging.” The technology operates by producing pulses of invisible laser light and measuring the time it takes for the light to reflect off solid things.
Luminar’s lidar technology is an additional pair of eyes for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving capabilities. Typically, Lidar sensors are combined with cameras, radar, and other perception software. Luminar’s technology enables both detection and classification of objects out to 250 meters.
The long-range detection assists a vehicle’s safety systems in finding objects much faster, giving the software more time to react safely, even at highway speeds.
Currently, Luminar has partnered with large automakers such as Mercedes Benz, Volvo, and Nissan.
