Luminar lines up $22 million bidder for lidar business

Luminar has reached a deal to sell its lidar business to a company called Quantum Computing Inc. for just $22 million unless it gets a better offer by Monday’s deadline of 5 p.m. CT.

The lidar maker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December and has already announced plans to sell its semiconductor subsidiary to Quantum Computing for $110 million. The transaction must be approved by a bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of Texas before it can close.

Luminar founder and former CEO Austin Russell expressed interest in making a bid for the LIDAR assets and attempted to buy the entire company in October before filing for bankruptcy. The company is currently seeking to subpoena him for information stored on his phone. Luminar is considering whether to pursue legal claims against him in connection with the board’s ethics investigation that led to his resignation last May. It’s unclear how many other bids Luminar may receive by Monday’s deadline.

Quantum Computing has been designated as a “stalking horse bidder,” which establishes a baseline for asset values ​​and prevents low bids. Luminar has said it wants to move the bankruptcy case forward quickly because its largest creditors, primarily financial institutions that have lent money to the company over the past few years, are funding the process.

Even if Luminar receives a higher offer, this horse bid would mean a significant drop from the company’s peak market capitalization in 2021, when it was worth about $11 billion. This reputation is supported by promises that Luminar’s lidar sensors will be widely adopted by major automakers like Volvo, which at one point had plans to buy more than 1 million of the sensors, but ultimately withdrew from the deal in 2025. Other deals with Mercedes-Benz and Polestar also fell through.

Quantum Computing was founded in 2001 as a company called Ticketcart to sell inkjet cartridges, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company acquired the beverage company in 2007 and went through its own restructuring process a decade later to pivot to producing optical technology for the budding world of quantum computing. The company raised more than $700 million from stock sales in 2025, but generated just $384,000 in revenue in the first nine months of last year.