Ouster Inc., a U.S. startup that helps make lidar sensors for self-driving vehicles and sensible towns, reported on Tuesday it has agreed to go public by a merger with exclusive objective acquisition firm Colonnade Acquisition Corp.
The deal values San Francisco-based mostly Ouster at all over $1.9 billion and can make it the fifth lidar company this yr to concur to a so-known as SPAC merger, pursuing Velodyne Lidar Inc., Luminar, Innoviz and Aeva.
Ouster sees its electronic lidar engineering as possessing useful apps over and above autonomous cars and extending to areas these as drones, wise cities and robotics, according to business co-founder and CEO Angus Pacala.
“The eyesight of the upcoming that we’re pushing towards is lidar on every automobile on earth, each and every shifting item on earth and every single piece of smart fastened infrastructure on earth, in the exact way that digicam technology has propagated and develop into ubiquitous in the past 20 decades,” Pacala explained in an interview, talking with Colonnade CEO Remy Trafelet.
Reuters had described earlier that Ouster and Colonnade were being nearing a merger settlement.
SPACs like Colonnade are more and more preferred expenditure motor vehicles which elevate funds in an initial public featuring (IPO) with the intention of acquiring a non-public firm. The acquired organization then becomes public as consequence of the merger and is an option to the conventional IPO method.
Colonnade raised $200 million in an IPO in August. For the offer with Ouster, Colonnade also raised $100 million through a private investment in public fairness, or PIPE, transaction. Traders in the PIPE involved Cox Automotive, Fontinalis Partners, and WWJ Enterprises.
Over-all the offer will convey in up to $300 million in gross proceeds for Ouster.
Ouster, which expects to produce all-around $19 million in income in 2020, stood out from other providers in the house that Colonnade had appeared at obtaining because its small business is previously generating income, Trafelet stated.
“It is not a organization system — they’re promoting authentic goods to actual prospects appropriate now,” he claimed.
Lidar sensors, which use laser mild pulses to render precise illustrations or photos of the setting all over the car or truck, are viewed as important by lots of automakers to allow bigger ranges of driver support right up to earning them capable of self-driving.
Five-year-outdated Ouster had earlier raised $142 million from personal sector investors, which include Cox , Silicon Valley Financial institution and Fontinalis, which is co-owned by Ford Motor Government Chairman Bill Ford.