Luminar is fighting with its biggest customer as bankruptcy threat looms

Swedish automaker Volvo has cancelled a five-year-old contract with Luminar, the latest escalation in an increasingly-ugly brawl between the lidar sensor company and its biggest customer.

The fight is happening during an existential moment for Luminar. The company recently defaulted on several of its loans. While it’s working with those lenders on a resolution, Luminar has warned investors it may have to declare bankruptcy.

To stave that off, Luminar recently laid off 25% of its staff and is trying to sell itself — or parts of itself — to potential buyers. One of them is Luminar founder Austin Russell, who resigned from the CEO role in May during an ethics inquiry. Luminar is also being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, recent filings reveal.

Volvo is not just a Luminar customer. The two companies have spent much of the last decade working together. Volvo invested in Luminar and helped the Florida-based startup get into some of its first production vehicles. (Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment.)

The relationship has been mutually beneficial. Luminar’s tech gave Volvo the confidence to dish out big promises about making the roads safer by offering automated driving features. Volvo gave Luminar credibility ahead of a 2020 SPAC merger that made Russell one of the youngest self-made billionaires ever.

But Luminar has faced challenges as a public company. It struggled to diversify away from Volvo, and in 2024 cut a fifth of its staff while deciding to outsource manufacturing of its sensors. Then, in May of this year, Russell abruptly resigned as Luminar revealed its board had opened a “code of business conduct and ethics” inquiry.

The fight with Volvo bubbled to the surface on October 31.

The company told shareholders in a regulatory filing on that day that Volvo decided to no longer make Luminar’s “Iris” lidar a standard sensor on its EX90 and ES90 vehicles. Volvo also told Luminar that it had “deferred” the decision of whether to include its next-generation “Halo” sensor in the Swedish automaker’s future vehicles.

Luminar said in the filing that it had “made a claim against Volvo for significant damages” and “suspended further commitments of Iris” for the automaker.

“The Company is in discussions with Volvo concerning the dispute; however, there can be no assurance that the dispute will be resolved favorably or at all,” Luminar wrote.

Volvo’s decisions were not just a threat to Luminar’s revenue — they also had knock-on effects for Luminar. In the October filing, Luminar said it stopped spending money on Iris sensors for Volvo, and in turn, the supplier that makes the sensors claimed this was a breach of their agreement.