Whatever Happened to All Those LiDAR Stocks?

The only way humanoids can enslave mankind is if we provide them with excellent vision. The eyes of any robot will include various technologies such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR), radar, and computer vision. Most companies building autonomous vehicles funnel information from all three types of sensors – cameras, radars, and LiDARs – into one sensing system which produces a single model of the environment, a process known as “sensor fusion.”

While Sir Elon of Musk believes LiDAR is a “fool’s errand,” driving platforms from Mobileye (MBLY) and NVIDIA (NVDA) both incorporate LiDAR technology. For retail investors, at least 8 pure-play LiDAR stocks went public thanks to SPACs. And the great news is that most trade at bargain basement values now.

The SPAC mania proved to be fool’s gold for capital-hungry startups that needed to keep developing technologies but couldn’t deliver on promises to impatient investors.

Yole Group

Finding the LiDAR Leader

For any technology theme, we always want to invest in leaders. They are better suited to compete on price and have better options for raising capital. Three pure-play LiDAR companies have emerged from the pack of seven pure-play LiDAR stocks which are collectively valued at just $2.3 billion.