Good morning, and thank you for joining today's webinar featuring Hans-Werner Kaas and Glen De Vos . We're especially honored to have Hans-Werner Kaas serve as our fireside host today. Hans-Werner is a McKinsey & Company Senior Partner Emeritus, where he was the co-founder of the Automotive and Assembly Practice for the Americas.
Today, Hans-Werner is joined by Glen De Vos , CEO of MicroVision. Glen is leading MicroVision's evolution from advanced R&D to scaled commercialization in lidar, autonomy, and intelligent mobility. With his wealth of experience and global leadership roles in automotive technology, perception systems, and advanced electronics, Glen brings a rare combination of technical depth, operational rigor, and strategic vision as the industry moves into Lidar 2.0 and MicroVision's next phase of growth. Following their remarks, we'll be opening the call to some questions. Before we get started, I wanna make a couple of quick housekeeping remarks.
Please note that some of the information you'll hear in today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, including but not limited to expectations regarding business, product, and go-to-market strategies, products and solutions, and market needs and timing, status of commercial engagement and future demand, level of customer and partner engagement, market landscape and opportunities, acquisition benefits and risks, projections of future operations and cash flow, cash liquidity, and the impacts of recent financing activities, availability of funds and conditions for raising capital, as well as statements containing words like believes, expects, plans, and other similar expressions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance.
Actual results could differ materially from the future results implied or expressed in the forward-looking statements. We encourage you to review our SEC filings, including our most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.
These filings describe risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those implied or expressed in our forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call, and except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update this information. With that out of the way, now I'd like to hand it over to our host, Hans-Werner Kaas.
Well, thank you, Jeff, for the introductory comments. Very important. First of all, a very warm welcome to the entire audience. I know we will have a great mix of attendees, automotive enthusiasts, not automotive enthusiasts, technologists, et cetera, business partners, investors. Thank you for joining us today. We are very excited to create discussion on the evolution of the Lidar industry. The path, if I may frame it that way, from innovation to scalable deployment and frankly, also to successful commercialization, and what it really takes to execute in a rapid-
Good morning, Lewis. How are you?
Looking really forward to.
Hi, Steve. Good.
How we will discuss the landscape.
How are you? Good. I'm a little behind. I just have this up right now, so you can get your computer set up.
Great, to be with you, Glen.
I need to switch everything to the other computer.
If you don't mind, let's jump right in there.
I got pulled into another town hall that I wasn't supposed to this morning, and I'm not ready.
We have some background noise here. Excuse me. Whoever might be talking technicalities in the background, if you could please silence your voice or mute yourself. Thank you. Just a warm welcome, in case some of you may have missed it. Warm welcome. I know we have a great mix of attendees today, automotive enthusiasts, technology enthusiasts, et cetera, investors, business partners. You're all very, very much welcome. If I may, Glen, also welcome to have you here with us today, representing not only MicroVision, but sharing key insights in the evolution of the lidar industry. If it's okay with you, Glen, I think let's jump right into it.
Yeah. Thanks, Hans-Werner. Great to be with you today. Let's get started.
Super. Glen, you have been with MicroVision now for nearly a year, but obviously, you're a well-known entity in the automotive industry and the technology industry. You have been many years with Aptiv. Before that, obviously, with Delphi. How would you describe the current state of the lidar industry?
Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking about that. It, it'll be a year in April. A lot has changed, and it continues to change. If you think about the Lidar industry kind of broadly, it's really entering a new era. You know, the first chapter of Lidar industry was kind of built on Silicon Valley disruption, hardware first, best-in-class, expensive, kind of financed on the assumption that automotive revenues would be coming sooner than later, that volume with automotive would drive costs down. The result of that was a lot of, you know, kind of flashy wins. There was a lot of excitement about Lidar and automotive, the revenue was very fragile. It, you know, Revenue in automotive is always uncertain.
There was very heavy burn rates for the supply base. As a result, a number of kind of washouts as that reality set in. Long time to revenue, slow growth market. While automotive remains a really important market for us, that reality colliding with that kind of startup behavior was pretty tough on this industry. When I look at it now, we're really transitioning to the next chapter, one that we call Lidar 2.0. The important characteristic of that is it's all about providing value. It isn't about providing the most, you know, the most impressive sensor. It's about getting lidar deployed at scale across real-world applications and platforms, and it takes a different mindset and a different set of capabilities.
What we're doing in MicroVision, and that's what we're talking about today, is really building MicroVision to lead that new chapter, to lead Lidar 2.0. Really, that involves combining what we would say, four critical capabilities. The first is the right portfolio and the right performance. That means you have to have a portfolio that's able to span across multiple applications, short range, long range, and able to serve multiple markets.
It can't be just a single-threaded portfolio that serves one market. You have to be able to serve automotive, industrial, security, and defense markets, and really with products and solutions that are developed for deployment, not just simply demos. You know, built in the US and built in Europe, MicroVision has a really strong position to do just that.
The right portfolio with the right performance. The second is, and, you know, I've talked about this since joining MicroVision, it's the right price. It's about cost, and price enables volume, not the other way around. We've embraced, you know, at MicroVision, that design to cost philosophy, really driven by solid-state solutions, and really with the knowledge that economics are a primary concern, not a secondary concern.
The technology is important, but economics are just as important. The solution has to be economically viable. The third key element is using software as leverage. Really, MicroVision is investing in what drives scale adoption, and we're shifting our center of gravity away from really, you know, hardware bragging rights to software that lowers cost, increases flexibility, and really strengthens the system capability, which is so critical for our customers.
That's what's, you know, really critical about using software as a leverage to help drive costs down. It's what we did with camera-based systems. It's what we did with radar systems. It's what we're doing now with Lidar. Then the fourth, you know, when we talk about product technology, I could talk about that all day long.
One of the things that you don't always talk about is capital discipline and execution, and it's being very disciplined about how we deploy our capital, how we engage with customers, how we pick which customers to really engage with, and where we basically place our investments. Delivering on time, on the budget with those automotive grade solutions, being very disciplined about our capital management and our financial management. As you think about that, you know, kind of shift to Lidar 2.0, those are really the four pillars that MicroVision is building.
Yeah. Thank you, Glen, for framing it that clearly, and indeed, it's not only about the right product line, the right performance of different product offerings. I'm very clear to hear it is about product cost, and that means enabling the right price, because both MicroVision as the provider needs to make a call it a sustainable margin and sustainable cash flows to sustain the business. Obviously, the price needs to be also attractive, be it for the OEM and ultimately for the end consumer, depending on the positioning or packaging, be it as an option or as an offering. Very clear to hear that. Let us dive in a little bit more in the changing customer expectation. If you look on the one hand, Lidar 1.0, now Lidar 2.0, what do customers really want other than obviously an affordable price?
No question about it. What are you seeing in the use cases like we have seen in the early 2000s? Remember, adaptive cruise control was enabled by radar, and suddenly, every end consumer said, "That's really value added for me. I probably should order it if it's not part of the an initial base offering.
Yeah. Yeah. I think for each market, it's a little different. I'll kind of focus in on automotive for right now, though. You know, there was a lot of excitement about the technology and the potential that the technology could bring in terms of useful features to the end consumer. That's what drove a lot of the real excitement. It was partially driven by, you know, Level 4 automated driving, but then also, hey, Level 3, hands-off driving. There was a lot of excitement about, well, what is that? You know, what can that bring to the end consumer, and what kind of value can that unlock? As you think about customers now in LiDAR 2.0.
Yeah
... you know, it's not, it's not just about the tech. It is about what value they're bringing to their own consumers, which means what value can they create? You know, as you think about that and kind of look at the different markets, you know, for automotive, it really includes how can Lidar enable Level 3 features but make them affordable for the OEM and ultimately the end consumer? It's a compelling value prop for the end consumer. There's features there, like you mentioned, adaptive cruise control, blind spot detection, or other features like we see on ADAS platforms. Once you have them, you'll never buy a car that doesn't have them.
Exactly.
You won't take a step back. They're incredibly sticky, and, you know, customers will expect that in their next vehicle...
Mm-hmm
... so it's customer pull. It has to be affordable, and that's really where the auto industry has struggled. I mean, even this week, we're seeing more OEMs kind of pulling back on their Level 3 offerings. The issue is, the end customer is not seeing the benefit for the on-cost to the vehicle. When they go buy a vehicle, and then the on-cost is $6,000, you know, $9,000, that's a lot, and there's got to be a lot of value there, and they're just not seeing the value and the benefit. Whereas, you know, ADAS systems are, you know, less than $2,000 or $3,000, maybe. Tremendous value.
Customers, you know, as we think about Lidar 2.0, we have to enable compelling features that are affordable to the end market, where consumers pull them through, and the OEM can create value from that. In industrial applications, it's a little bit different. Lidar has been there for a long time.
Mm-hmm.
Now, what we're doing is we're expanding the product offerings. There's automation, so enabling autonomy for forklifts and, you know, all sorts of industrial automation and robotics within the factories and within the distribution centers. There's also a really expanding the safety systems that are on human-operated, you know, vehicles like forklifts, like tuggers, like other equipment that's still manually operated in the plants and in the distribution centers, where we can provide very cost-effective and very effective safety systems for those. In security and defense, this is really this area is moving very quickly, and especially in the area of unmanned ground vehicles, so UGVs, which need to have very capable perception systems onboard the vehicle.
Also in terms of drones and what we're seeing with drones, and the drones ability to extend that vehicle's perception system, so Lidar on the, on the drone doing kind of mapping and communicating with the ground vehicles, but also just terrestrial mapping, you know, ISR missions, these types of things. You really, you know, when you think about that question, what is the customer expecting? It's value, and it's really unlocking new features and compelling use cases that, you know, that for their applications or for their customers, they, you know, see a very strong pull. What's exciting for us is our technology portfolio, the same core technologies support all three end markets.
you know, that is incredibly important because I can basically repackage but reuse the same technology, the same software across all of those end markets, and that gives a tremendous benefit for us.
Yeah. Thank you, Glen. One follow-up question, as you talked about-
different end markets, automotive, industrial, but also obviously aerospace, defense, security, and using the same core technology. Is it even mutually beneficial for a player like MicroVision, and I know there are obviously others as well, to actually play both in auto, non-auto, knowing that the automotive adoption path-
Yeah
... needs still a little bit time?
Yeah. Yeah, that, it's important for a couple of reasons. One, and to have multiple end markets where you can basically commercialize your technology. The first is that they tend to have different sell cycles, different times and paths to revenue.
Mm-hmm.
What we're seeing is, you know, while auto develops, you know, we still believe that's the biggest TAM, that's the biggest market. While that develops...
Mm-hmm
... we're able to capitalize and monetize basically in nearer term markets like industrial, like security and defense. That brings revenue streams in now, you know, while auto develops, which is great for the business. The other thing it does is, longer term, as auto is there, as industrial is there, as security and defense is there, you get really revenue resilience, revenue diversity. When an auto cycle occurs, auto is a very cyclical business. When that occurs, well, industrial is on a different cycle. It's on a different time horizon. Security and defense is on a different cycle. You don't have that effect of, Oh, my entire market, my entire revenue stream is now going through a down cycle. You have revenue diversity, which gives you a lot more resilience.
We talked about revenue fragility earlier on. I mentioned that. That's exactly, you know, this gives you the opposite of that. It gives you a robust revenue stream that's less sensitive to down cycles.
Yeah
... that's incredibly important for companies like ours.
No, thank you for highlighting, frankly, multiple dimensions and nuances of the economic benefits of developing and deploying the technology, both in automotive and non-automotive. Let us shift gears slightly to the lidar industry itself. There has been over the last, frankly, few years, and not only recently, quite a bit going on in terms of consolidation of the industry and in the lidar space, as we know.
Obviously, when you look at other, call it automotive supply or non-automotive supply segments, the structure of an industry segment and how players behave, that plays a very important role. Where do you see MicroVision's role in this changing and new landscape, evolving landscape?
Yeah.
Probably the best way to say it, and what steps are you actively taking?
Yeah. Well, near term, we've been actively acquiring, so we've been a force of consolidation.
Mm-hmm
... you're indicating, you know, Lidar was a new market, an uncertain market, but a new market, a lot of technology entrants coming into it. Revenue is playing out, you know, in, you know, slower than what was anticipated. That gave us the opportunity to identify and then be able to, you know, capitalize on consolidation or acquisition of companies where we felt.
Mm
their assets really were beneficial for us. You know, Ibeo, approximately three years ago, Scantenna earlier this year, now more recently, Luminar. In every case, when we looked at it, we said, "Hey, it's a technology that is interesting for us in terms of our portfolio. It's talent that
Mm-hmm
... that we think is really important for a technology and an engineered product. In the case of Luminar, it's also, it's both of those things, plus commercial, so existing commercial relationships. It really brought all three, all three elements forward. We know we see our role not simply as an aggregator, but being able to essentially help the industry consolidate, bring together the right pieces and parts so that we can, we can have that as part of a really a coherent portfolio, and then put ourselves in the best position and to the, on the path to commercialization across all three end markets.
I think, you know, it's, I think we'll still see more of this occurring in our space, but for MicroVision, you know, we're focused on how do we build a company that, as we think about Lidar 2.0, we're positioned to lead in that, in that chapter, and not not simply chase it, but lead it.
Lead it.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, well said, Glen. You just mentioned Luminar, obviously it's on everybody's mind, given the most recent acquisition by MicroVision. Can you dive a little bit deeper into the role that Luminar plays for, I call it now, the combined entity, the combined offering of MicroVision and Luminar? How does Luminar align with your Lidar 2.0 vision and pathway, as you just talked about?
Yeah, Great question, because obviously that was a major development for us here.
Mm-hmm
... just recently. I would say there's two things that, you know, as I mentioned, there's two really critical things that Luminar brought, and the one was from a portfolio standpoint. Their long-range Lidar, which is available already now.
Mm-hmm
Iris in production, Halo-
Yes
... in development, but essentially B-stage. That accelerates our portfolio, our ability to offer a 1550 nm solution now.
Mm-hmm.
What's also important is, you know, that's the product. Behind that product, there are tremendous amount of technology assets. There's technology building blocks, there's technology, you know, both in hardware and software, that we can apply more broadly as well.
Yeah.
At an immediate benefit of a long range scanning solution today, it has a broader benefit of their technology applies across, you know, a lot more areas of the portfolio than just that. The other thing we talk about is their customer relationships and the contracts that they have. That accelerates, you know, our path to revenue, to put it very simply.
Those engagements, and to the credit to the Luminar team in terms of developing that, booking those business, set, getting those engagements started, those engagements are, you know, incredibly valuable. We understand them, we understand the applications, we understand those customers. Many of these are customers I've dealt with for many years. That's the other piece that it brings. Underpinning all of that is talent. You know.
Talent, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For us, the way I look at it is that when you think about the Luminar acquisition, it wasn't about, hey, MicroVision is acquiring Luminar to grow bigger, to be a bigger Lidar company, to, you know, basically increase our size. It was acquired for us to move faster, and move faster both on the technology development front, but also moving faster on the path to commercialization and revenue. That was the unique opportunity for us. Team worked really, really well to be able to make that happen, and now we're focused on bringing it all together and execution.
Yeah. No, thank you, Glen. Let us quickly stay with one theme you've mentioned, as the two, three key strategic rationales why you acquired Luminar. Talked about the technology assets, the portfolio, the talent, but also the commercial relationships and customer access. Let's stay with that for a moment. Can you talk a bit more about revenue and commercialization? Because I know we have a very well-informed audience here.
Yeah.
Some of them would like to see automotive customers.
Yeah
... faster and more scalable pathway to adoption, but that has different reasons. Obviously, we have camera, radar-based solutions in the ADAS stack, but also there's the cost and price argument. How does that pathway look like? I know you need to look at both auto, non-auto, as you just outlined.
Yeah. It's a really, that's a really important question, Hans-Werner. Let me start by saying, you know, there's a customer set that Luminar had, that they were engaged with, and I can tell you, when you're working with a supplier and you've invested, you know, in some cases, years of efforts and, you know, development work with that supplier, and then that supplier has financial difficulties or, you know, goes into a bankruptcy, that's incredibly concerning.
As a customer to that supplier, you know, you have a big investment there, and now you have to look at, Hey, do I throw away everything I've invested in that? Do I have to find a different partner to work with? Do I have to basically start over and lose all that time? It's incredibly disruptive for those customers now.
Mm.
you know, that, I understand that situation very, very well. one of our first priorities-.
Mm-hmm
was reaching out to our customers, engaging with them, and basically, you know, repairing those relationships, restarting those relationships.
Mm-hmm.
What's been great is, you know, we're able to, you know, one, we're a team that has a tremendous amount of automotive experience, industrial experience, so we understand what they're doing and what their needs are. You know, for us to come in and say: "Look, we'll support you on Iris, we'll support you on Halo, we'll support your near-term supply needs as well as your developmental needs," has been, you know, really well received.
Got it.
We have a company that's, you know, they have a company that's acquired Luminar that can be a good partner. You know, that's where we now have to prove that.
Yeah.
From kind of normalizing the relationship to demonstrating we're the right long-term partner. I believe we're in a very good position to do that. We have the right portfolio, we have the right, I think, design to cost mindset and ability to execute. I think we have a great story and a value prop for those customers. What I can tell you today is that's been, you know, that's been a very, you know, that's been a very positive process. To be honest, it's one of the best parts of my job, is to be able to talk to customers.
Mm-hmm
... and understand how I can solve their pain points. You know, that's repairing the existing commercial relationships that Luminar had, and it's going very well. The other aspect of this, there's two other things that are happening as well. The one is, I can now bring in MicroVision's portfolio to those Luminar customers.
I can show that here's what we're doing with short-range sensing, here's what we're doing in these other technologies. It's a more comprehensive roadmap. It's not just about, what am I doing with Halo, for example, it's, "Hey, I have MOVIA, I have software, I have all these different capabilities that I can now bring to bear." The other thing is, I can now bring in Luminar's technology into my MicroVision customer.
Yeah.
You know, where I was really focused in the near term on short range, I now have the ability to bring a long range 15, you know, time-of-flight sensor.
Fifteen.
It's really synergistic in terms of how, one, we rebuild the existing customer relationships, but then we augment them and expand them with additional portfolio offerings. It's been, you know, to date, great progress. We have to execute, we have to demonstrate, we have to prove, and I know we can do that, but I'm really happy with the progress that we've made so far.
Yeah. Thank you, Glen. Then thank you for being so transparent also what it takes to call it improve, reignite. You, you used the word repair customer relationships. I think folks in the audience here really, really appreciate that. Thank you. Let us, because you already touched on it, talk a bit more about execution. You, you mentioned it already.
At the end of the day, you can make a lot of statements, you can show great, call it pilots or prototypes, in certain settings, but ultimately it has to go in a higher volume, scalable deployment, we called it a bit earlier. Lidar 1.0 transition to Lidar 2.0, as you framed it, is indeed very critical. The first stage was much more proving technology, innovation, et cetera. The space or call it the justification to be, to exist for Lidar in addition to or augmenting camera and radar, now it is about delivery, and that is not only operational delivery-
Yeah
... because you are obligated to, quote, unquote, "To deliver returns to your shareholders.
Yeah.
Delivery also means commercially successful. If you wouldn't mind, can you elaborate a little bit on why you are so confident that that is the pathway to go?
Yeah. Yeah, you're exactly right. You know, I've lived through this in, you know, decades in the automotive world, where, you know, the kind of the fun, in quite honestly, the easier part is demonstrating a technology that gets the market's interest. While that's great, it, execution is what drives the outcomes.
Yes.
I mean, that's. You have to deliver. You have to go from delivering prototypes or small volumes, you know, to being able to deliver hundreds of thousands and millions at the right price, at the right reliability, and at the right performance over the full lifetime of that product. That's what we kind of call automotive grade. Industrial and security and defense, they have the same expectations, so it's no different in those other markets.
You can't, you know, you don't get to get a pass on performance, reliability in the other markets either. It's that automotive grade mentality. What we're doing with the team and what we're building with our team, and in particular, our leadership team, and then the key talent that we have in the organization is just that.
Experienced leaders that understand how to deliver into the automotive market and how to support customers all the way through development, through launch, into production, over the full life cycle of that product, which when you add up, add the whole thing up, it's like 20 years of support on these programs.
Mm
... in the automotive space. It's not, I mean, it's a long-term commitment. We have that leadership team. We have, with the combined organization now, we have just an outstanding talent in our engineering and our commercial team. These are individuals that really know how to serve the market, understand the expectations of the customer.
That gives me the confidence we can execute on our plan. You know, as we sit here today, what we're doing right now is we're re-energizing, you know, the near-term activities with our customers. We're delivering product. We're shipping against the POs that we transferred from Luminar to MicroVision.
Yeah
...those, it started this week. We're beginning that process. Customers have a right to be, you know, skeptical and critical. They should be. We have to demonstrate and prove that we can deliver. I'm confident with the team that we have, we can do that, and that's been a big part of, you know, that year we talked about since I've been here.
That's been a huge part of my focus, is putting the team together that is able then to really understand the customer needs and execute to them. It's exciting to be in that process now, and that's, like I said earlier, it's the best part of my job, to be with the customer and delivering to them.
Yeah. At the end of the day, the existence of any, call it, company, is that you solve the customer's problem. Sometimes the customer is aware of the problem, he can describe or state it to you.
Yeah
sometimes not, and that's also your job, to actually lay out an opportunity of additional customer benefit.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you talked quite a bit about the blueprint for the future MicroVision strategy in auto, non-auto, near-term opportunities in non-auto markets. Obviously, larger volume, total addressable market coming, also needs a convincing, obviously, of automotive OEMs and frankly, the end consumer. Let me stay for a moment with the element and the importance of talent. How do you integrate the best of best? Luminar brought great leaders, engineers. MicroVision has great leaders and engineers and different footprints in Europe and around the US. How do you bring the two teams together?
Yeah
... to be one joint, call it, uniform team?
Yeah. Yeah, that's a, that's a really important question because, I've been through a lot of acquisitions and integration activities in my career. I mean, that's been, and there's, you know, when you acquire a company or you bring in a new group, that integration is really critical. Then, you know, and you have to manage it carefully. What I would tell you is, there's a couple things we do.
The first, and I think this is the most important thing, is to align on a strategy, both from a technology standpoint, where are we going from a technology standpoint and a product standpoint, so everybody understands and has a common vision for what the business is doing on the product side. That, you know, for engineers in particular, it's incredibly important that the engineering community understands what we're trying to do from a technology and a product development standpoint. Aligning on that strategy, critical step.
Got it.
The other step, this is more on the soft side, is spending time with the teams, I mean, every level. That is, you know, communication, whether it's all-hands meetings, skip-level meetings, it's just the.
Got it.
It's just the blocking and tackling of good management, if you will.
Mm-hmm.
Where you engage with the team, and you have real-time feedback on the concerns and the needs of the organization. As you're bringing two organizations together, you know, you're talking about different cultures coming together, different, you know, ideas coming together, different philosophies. You know.
Got it.
... these philosophies can be very orthogonal to each other, and, you know, you have to unify them. You do that with time spent with the team, with, you know, really explaining and communicating why we're doing what we're doing. You have the product strategy. You need to explain why you're doing what you're doing. The final piece is, really kind of wraps around culture, and it's important to make sure that as people are joining-
Mm-hmm
Everybody understands what's important from a cultural standpoint. What is the culture of our organization, and what are the guiding principles in how we do our business.
Mm-hmm
... for everybody in the organization, every role, every person in the organization? For me, you know, those are the three critical things at this stage, where, you know, it's very new, it's very fresh. You have to make sure you have your finger on the pulse of how the organization is feeling about things. You are providing direction. Then you're providing constant reinforcement of those things, including the culture and how, you know, how you want your organization to behave.
Yeah
... and the mindset. You know, for us, what I would tell you is, you know, you know, the, you know, being these two organizations, being in automotive, being in lidar, there's a lot that fully aligns already and is complementary. It's really focusing now on, you know, making sure we have our hand on the pulse of how people are feeling, how the work is going, and then really driving the expectations and the cultural elements.
Thank you. Thank you, Glenn. Yeah, I'm glad that was also the reason why I asked the question. You're pointing out the importance of developing a joint culture ultimately is defined first by mindsets, then how we behave based on these mindsets and convictions and beliefs each single individual holds. Thank you for emphasizing that importance of culture, bringing two organizations together. I think with that segue, I think we can transition to the open Q&A session. I know we have quite a few folks who have submitted questions or are real-time submitting questions. Jeff, if you wouldn't mind, to guide us a little bit, what's on the audience's mind, and how can we help?
Sure, yeah. Thanks for the discussion, gentlemen. We've been monitoring the questions throughout the conversation and also took a lot of questions over the last 24 hours. We'll try to get to as many as we can here. I think the first one that people seem to be really interested in is just a really succinct distillation, Glenn, around what you believe the real differentiators are for this new MicroVision and this new landscape. How would you sort of boil that down to, you know, the key points of differentiation that set MicroVision up to kinda lead this renaissance in LiDAR and be more successful?
Yeah, a great question. I think there's, I would highlight a couple really important factors. One is I would start with portfolio, and we have now, with Scantenna, with Luminar, with what we've done and with what MicroVision has developed, we have the broadest portfolio in the industry, in my opinion. We can cover all the different use cases in terms of short range, long range.
We have solid-state, we have polygon scanning, we have MEMS scanning. We have all the different building blocks that allow us to really go after those end markets, the three end markets that we talked about: automotive, industrial, security, and defense. That broad portfolio is, I think, a critical differentiator for us. The second is, I think we have...
If you think about our U.S. and our Germany-based team, we have some of the very best talent in this space, bar none. The fact is, as a U.S. and a Germany-based company, we have an advantage as we think about some of the markets we serve. There's a fundamental advantage there.
The third thing I would say is our approach around software is, I think, unique in the industry in that we've talked about our open software framework, and it's really about opening and integrating our software with our customers' system architecture and their software architecture. Giving full access and visibility to the software that's in our sensor to our customers to make their system integration. We're a sensor company, which means we integrate with a perception system and a control system that's on the customer's platform.
As such, we wanna make that integration as easy as possible, so the software strategy is, I think, unique as well. The final thing I would say is our maniacal focus on cost and the design-to-cost mentality that we have. The way we look at these markets is: What makes sense for this market from an economics and a pricing standpoint? How do we enable that?
That design-to-cost mentality, that relentless focus on how do we enable our customers to create value for themselves and for their end consumer, I think is also a really, an important differentiator for us. It just hasn't been part of the landscape in LiDAR 1.0, that we see as critical to LiDAR 2.0.
Yeah. Jeff, let me, can I just add or reinforce maybe two points what Glen mentioned? Let me start quickly with the cost point. Always in the past, the long-held belief is indeed wait for volume. You divide all your investments, be it R&D and CapEx, to a bigger denominator. We call it scale, and bring cost per unit down. I think what Glen mentioned around the design-to-cost mentality and approach, and that relates to product architecture, where you transition to solid-state scanning. How do you really change the product nature in terms of the pathway of the light, and then you need to collect the light back? We don't wanna get too technical here today.
There is quite some space in optimizing product architecture and taking bill of material costs down, and that indeed helps to bring prices down, but to actually sustain and also defend and earn viable margins for any player, and in that case, obviously also MicroVision.
The point around open software capability to integrate in the ADAS stack of the OEM is very critical. Most OEMs, if not all, they do wanna have a proprietary ADAS stack, advanced driver systems, and that has different layers and different notions, et cetera. You need to provide an output of the LiDAR system, which is easier to integrate and makes the ADAS offering just more viable, more safe for the end consumer, et cetera, and affordable. That's only two points I would just highlight in addition.
Yeah, great point, Sandro.
Yeah, I think the second question here I'm seeing come up, you know, it's sort of rooted in some of your comments, Glen De Vos, around the transition from Lidar 1.0 to Lidar 2.0, and going from proving the technology to proving the value.
I see people asking, you know, what are the real customer problems that, you know, MicroVision can solve, that they can help create value for customers around? Maybe that's something you can both speak to when you look at the landscape. You know, what are the problems that need to get solved, and what are the problems that MicroVision is uniquely positioned to solve and create value around?
Yeah, it's, Ultimately, that's, you know, that's gets to the core of what we are trying to do as a business, is how do we solve those customer problems? It's a little different for each of the end markets that I talked about. In automotive, you know, it's when you think about providing lidar into the automotive, it's all in the safety domain. That's the whole point of the perception system is really around safety and convenience functions, kind of what we put under the ADAS umbrella. To that point, there's three things that the OEMs, I think, are really trying to provide to their customers. One is one is just safety.
They want the vehicle to be as safe as possible, so providing the most reliable, the most robust safety system, whether that's Level 1, 2, or 3, is critical. Providing them with a perception system, which determines the efficacy of the ADAS system, but providing them with a really robust perception system makes their job of ensuring that they have a safe vehicle that much, just that much easier and that much better.
The second is, you know, they have a regulatory pressure and a regulatory requirement, whether it's, you know, FMVSS regulations, or it's the NCAP type of spec, you know, the insurance industry or the NCAPs, that are demanding, "Hey, your vehicles need to have certain capabilities, automated emergency braking, backup cameras," whatever it might be, you know, vulnerable road user detection.
We're helping them achieve those requirements, but achieve them robustly, but at an affordable on cost of the vehicle. The third is, you know, is really differentiation. One of the areas you can still differentiate, and this is why Level 3 is still really interesting for the OEMs, is that's an area for differentiation. It's an area where they can establish unique functions to draw...
that make people wanna buy their car, that they've, you know, they're drawn to, "Hey, I'm gonna buy this brand versus the other brand because this thing has, this car, this OEM has these features." You know, those, when you think about it, we're helping them solve for each of those, and to do it in a financially viable manner, so that, you know, for them, it's a good value prop.
It solves the three, you know, the three aspects that they're trying to do for their brand, for the regulators, and for market differentiation, it does it at an economically viable and sustainable level. That's automotive. For, you know, for industrial, it's a little different. It's really, you know, there you're not talking about so much brand differentiation or convenience functions. You're talking about economics.
How do I make the cost of moving goods, materials in a warehouse lower? It's about efficiency. It's about a cost and economic value prop. Lidar is a key part of automation for warehouses and factories. You know, it's the lower cost that I can provide to the, you know, forklift or the robot or whatever. You know, the stronger their value prop is, the greater the rate of adoption is.
There it's a, you know, you're solving for an economic model that lowers total operating costs for basically the warehouse or the plant. When you talk about, you know, security and defense, those are, again, very different. You're really solving, you know, the question around autonomy, and so that you can deliver logistics, you can provide material out into the field.
You can do things without putting your personnel at risk. You know, it's a very different model, but, you know, it demands a really, you know, capable solution. That's... So, you know, it's like I said, those three end markets, very diverse and different in terms of what you're solving, but ultimately, it's the same underlying technology, and that's what gets us really excited about being able to pursue and commercialize in those three spaces.
Yeah. Anything you wanna add there, Hans-Werner?
Yeah, you know what? I think Glenn laid out, and, Glenn, you framed it so well across those different verticals, or we call them end markets. That notion of solving a customer's problem or customer benefit, it should not be underestimated. Sometimes we all take it a little bit lightly, but articulating that very crisply together with the customer, like in the case of providing a Lidar system as input or part of an whole ADAS stack or software platform, software/hardware platform, to be more precise, is critical. When you're driving at a higher speed, 60, 70 miles per hour on a highway, and you have an obstacle in darkness, a small obstacle, frankly, there are very specific, even test cases defined by some OEMs on that.
That can indeed help to actually avoid significant or severe accidents, and that makes you, as a customer, really, really safer, and you as an end consumer. Articulating that to the OEM to end consumer, is so important. I just picked one of the end markets, what Glen highlighted.
That's great. I mean, the next question I see here is kind of rooted in what you talked about there, Glen, around economics and cost. I think people are reacting well to the notion that, cost drives volume, not the other way around. You've said it a couple times.
Yeah.
The question I'm seeing come up is, you know, what is your expectation for pricing in the market moving forward? You know, what does that look like?
Yeah. I think the key is, you know, as we think about this next cycle, I'll talk about automotive. I'll focus on that for this discussion. As you think about it, automotive is kind of in this period where they're of reformulation. They're, you know, looking at going forward. Lidar is still viewed as an essential part of Level 3, Level 4, a lot of activities on that front.
You know, the general expectation is to be able to get into a Level 3 type of activity, driver out of the loop, you know, you gotta be, you know, somewhere between the, you know, below the $500 per unit for the long range component below, you know, at or below about $200 per unit for the short range component.
As you think about that system, now, that gets you to Level 3, and Level 3 is still an expensive option. You know that, you know, that's great. That's a good step. The reality is, for mass adoption, you need to get to into Level 2 vehicles. You need to get further down into the ADAS applications, where we know the pricing is incredibly sensitive. If you think about it, just to put some numbers around it, if you think about, you know, the, you know, a car you buy today, maybe it's $60,000-$70,000 purchase price for the vehicle.
To bring on or the sticker price for all of the advanced driver assistance features, Level 2 features, typically is somewhere around $2,000, which is, you know, when you look at the benefit and to the cost for the end consumer, that's a great value. That's why virtually all the cars have it now. When you look at Level 3, it's a significant step more than that's been the problem, basically, is, well, how much more value do I get for that? That's been the struggle. As we think about, now, I gotta fit Lidar into an on-cost to the end consumer of $2,000, that requires aggressive price reductions on the Lidar sensors.
That means that's a completely different way of thinking about it and way of penetrating, that's what we're focused on, where you're well, you know, you're well below $100 for a short-range sensor. You're well below $250 for the long-range component. Even at that, I mean, that's still a lot. It's a lot to fit into that price point on that car.
Average car this year in the U.S. exceeded $50,000 for the first time, right? I think it's $50,300. That's close to the average annual in- household income. You know, it really is a challenge. Affordability of that vehicle, that cost sensitivity, that's why we're so focused on cost, and how do we rethink kind of the cost of Lidar for Lidar 2.0?
We'll be talking a lot about that this year as we get into 2026. That'll be a big focus for us. We'll share a lot more on that, but we think we have a pathway to get there. It's... Again, I'll kind of come back to, that's the engineering talent that we brought in. That's the direction we're driving, and that's, that is that maniacal focus on system costs and our end customer value that we have.
There's something, Jeff, even though Lidar is obviously a different technology compared with camera or radar, but in the early days of camera and radar adoption, in the early years of 2000, Glenn, you know it from your Delphi, and certainly in the Aptiv days, we talked also about much, much bigger numbers. Today, camera, radar, obviously short range, long range, mid-range radar, but we are well below the $50 area.
Just keep in mind how the evolution happened. By the way, as we should all be aware of, we should not take 15 years or 20 years to get to the target cost or price numbers, which Glenn just stated. That has to go faster to make a difference with OEMs and customers, auto and non-auto, but also for the end consumer.
Yeah. That, and I gotta say, Hans, that is, your point is spot on. It took us 15, 20 years for ADAS to go from the very first introductions of adaptive cruise control and radar back in 2000 to where we are today. I mean, we can accelerate that. We can take the lessons we learned from that, from that whole experience. We apply it to LiDAR, we accelerate.
We're talking, you know, a much shorter time horizon. Ultimately, it delivers more value to our customers and the end consumer. It delivers greater levels of safety, which is one of the best parts of being in this space. You get to work in great technology, but also technology that brings a societal benefit, safety, saving lives, avoiding, you know, pedestrian fatalities. This is, you know, that's what gets our engineers passionate about what they do. It has to happen much faster. It can't be 15 years. That's a fact.
Well, thank you for that.
We've got a few minutes left. There's a couple of important questions I wanna make sure we hit on. You mentioned customers. What's the state of the Luminar customer relationships? Volvo, Nissan, Caterpillar, have you delivered to any of these brands yet?
Yeah. I won't go into specific customers, but I would tell you, we've reached out, and we're engaging with, I think now, all of the customers. We've had those engagements, and I've been meeting personally with them, and, you know, just to. I mean, they have all the questions that you can imagine. You know, "Hey, what about MicroVision?
Tell us about what are you doing, and what's next steps?" You know, one of the first priorities, of course, was, hey, they have POs in the system. They need product. They have to continue to do their work. To that, to the question, we began shipping product this week to a European customer, so that is now happening. What's exciting about that, you know, for me is, hey, that's how you drive revenue.
You're shipping product, you're, you know, you're delivering, you know, not just discussing, you're delivering, you're executing. This is the beginning of where MicroVision can demonstrate to those customers, you know, we got your back. We have you covered. We're gonna provide the support you need, both from a product standpoint, from a development standpoint, from a long-term commercial partner standpoint.
Last quick question here. You've talked about kind of filling out the leadership team...
Mm-hmm.
with the right skill sets, right expertise. A number of folks asking: What's the status on the CFO hire?
Yeah, the CFO hire is in process. We're really, you know, our plan is really, as we come into Q2, to kind of finalize that. I would also say, though, and this is really a credit to the finance and the finance team and the legal team here at MicroVision. We have with Steve, we have a great leader in place with Simon Biddiscombe, who is our executive vice chair.
Tremendous experience as CEO, CFO. We have a great team. Why that's important is it, you know, it allows us to execute on our near-term activities as we need to, both from a financial discipline standpoint and compliance standpoint, but also from a fundraising standpoint, as we saw here recently, we announced yesterday.
It also means we can take the time for what is, in our opinion, a really critical hire. All hires are critical. This one for MicroVision, we wanna get it right. We wanna take the time, and we're fortunate to be in a position with the team that we have to be able to do that, but we're still looking at the Q2 timeframe to get that wrapped up.
Great. I know time is running out here. There's still a ton of questions that we'd love to answer. We'll try to get to all those questions through the investor relations team and the MicroVision blog and social handles over the coming days. Since we're tight on time, I'm gonna turn it back over to you, Hans-Werner, to wrap things up.
Well, thank you. Thank you, Jeff. First of all, a big thank you to Glen for sharing your insights, frankly, at a very important inflection point for MicroVision and also for Luminar, obviously. Also thank you for the participants. I know we could, and we hope we could touch on the key questions. We also know, as Jeff mentioned, we could not answer, given the constraint of time we have, all the questions. There are different forums in the future to address that. I really would like to thank you, and, with that said, I would like to wrap it up. There will also be a short video coming now, so please do not sign off yet.
That will provide potentially a few more highlights, and I can assure you it's insightful to watch. With that said, the video will be coming, and again, to everybody, thank you, Glenn. Thank you to entire combined MicroVision, Luminar teams behind you and with you. It was a pleasure to have you.
Very good. Thank you, Hans-Werner.
Thank you.
The lidar industry has entered a new era. The first chapter proved the technology worked. The next chapter is about providing value. The new MicroVision is built to lead the Lidar 2.0 era. Today, I'm here to tell you how we're gonna do it. Lidar 1.0 was about proving the technology, demonstrating range, resolution, raw performance.
That chapter mattered. Today's customers don't need proof that lidar works. They need proof of the value it unlocks. That means a new paradigm. We're building the new MicroVision to lead this era. Our strategy is clear: We win in Lidar 2.0 by combining four critical capabilities. First, the right portfolio with the right performance. Coverage across short and long-range use cases, serving the automotive, industrial, security, and defense markets. Second, the right price.
In Lidar 2.0, price enables volume, not the other way around. We embrace a design-to-cost philosophy driven by solid-state solutions where economics are primary, not secondary. Third, using software as leverage. We invest in what drives scalable adoption. We're shifting our center of gravity from hardware bragging rights to software that lowers cost, increases flexibility, and strengthens system capability. Fourth, capital discipline with credible execution.
We take a disciplined, collaborative approach to customer partnerships, delivering programs on time, on budget, and to automotive grade standards. The Luminar acquisition was critical to the acceleration of MicroVision's strategy in two fundamental ways. First, it completes our Lidar technology portfolio. Our customers need a partner that can deliver a portfolio that supports their different applications and requirements. By integrating Luminar's assets with MicroVision's, we now offer the most comprehensive Lidar portfolio in the industry.
We expand our capability to serve different industries, use cases, and price points. Not only will this open up immediate revenue streams in automotive, security, and defense, it also makes our business more resilient and diversified. Second, Luminar accelerates revenue. It brings active commercial programs and established customer relationships that pull forward our path to scale. By normalizing and restarting those paused relationships, we are converting them into active POs and shipments.
The Luminar acquisition positions MicroVision as a leader for Lidar 2.0. Strategy defines direction, execution defines outcomes. With this combined expertise, MicroVision has an incredibly deep technical team with expertise in hardware, software, and a deep understanding of automotive qualification and manufacturing at scale. Importantly, we have a seasoned leadership team with proven credibility across the markets we serve, including automotive. The Lidar 1.0 days of niche applications are behind us.
The industry has moved beyond headline-driven hyp e towards scalable deployment and mass adoption. This is the era of Lidar 2.0, and the new MicroVision is built to lead it. We have the strategy, we have the portfolio, and the performance at the right price, and we have the team. Now, we execute.