AEye is going public through a merger with CF Finance Acquisition Corp. III that will value the company at $2 billion. As part of the deal, AEye will raise $225 million in private investment in public equity from investors that include GM Ventures, Subaru-SBI, Intel Capital, Hella Ventures and Taiwania Capital. CF Finance Acquisition Corp. III will also contribute $230 million to the company in trust.
AEye offers intelligent Detection and Ranging platform (iDAR™), an artificial perception platform for vehicle autonomy, ADAS and robotic vision applications. The company’s iDAR offering uses lidar to create a real-time map of the environment using last pulses but adds a twist on the technology by adding a camera that generates images with natural light.
The iDAR technology is said to deliver a significant reduction in the amount of processing power it takes to generate a useful map. When the company raised $40 million in venture capital from Intel and Kleiner Perkins in 2018, AEye said its technology enables autonomous vehicle perception software to run up to 10 times faster than normal.
