LG Innotek, a subsidiary of the South Korean LG Group engaged in the production of components and materials, has entered into a manufacturing partnership with Aeva Technologies, a company that produces 4D LiDAR sensing systems.
As part of the partnership, LG Innotek will manufacture and supply Aeva’s Atlas Ultra 4D LiDAR sensors for automobiles, and subsequently expand the technology’s application in consumer electronics, robotics, and industrial automation. As part of the deal, LG Innotek will invest up to USD 50 million in Aeva by acquiring a stake of about 6% in the American company.
“The first part of the partnership is focused on the automotive sector,” Soroush Salehian, co-founder and CEO of Aeva, told TechCrunch. “LG Innotek will be our manufacturing partner for some of the world’s top 10 passenger car manufacturers.”
Founded in 2017, Aeva says it has invested nearly half a billion dollars in developing what it calls “4D LiDAR on a chip.” Unlike conventional LiDAR systems, which rely on time-of-flight measurements to estimate distance, Aeva’s frequency-modulated continuous wave perception technology measures both distance and velocity for each pixel in real time, Salehian says.
“It’s like going from a black-and-white to a color camera. We get speed information as a new dimension,” he explained.
Aeva says it has integrated the entire LiDAR system, including the optics, into a silicon photonic module. According to Salehian, this miniaturized, chip-level design enables more efficient manufacturing and integration, especially for scaling up in markets such as automotive, robotics, and consumer electronics.
The company plans to use the capital raised from the transaction for product development and expansion of its team. “Over the past eight years, we’ve made [hardware] ultra-small, and we’re sticking to that trajectory. We are going to move to a monolithic, single-chip device,” Salehian said.
Aeva is also targeting the manufacturing sector and has entered into partnerships with Nikon in Japan and CKG in Germany. The company is also expanding its activities in the field of intelligent infrastructure and transportation, providing security and monitoring solutions at major US airports, including SFO and JFK Terminal One.
