Accurate 3D vision is essential for machines to map and interact with the physical world. LiDAR is a required sensor for machine perception. The adoption of LiDARs is currently limited by the cost, size, and performance.

There are dozens of LiDAR companies on the market. However, there is only one that creates LiDAR by leveraging commercially available semiconductor chip manufacturing at scale.

This company is called Voyant Photonics and we at LDV partnered with the brilliant co-founders Chris Phare and Steve Miller back in 2019. Voyant Photonics’ devices demonstrate a complete LiDAR system in a field-deployable package, using Voyant’s patented techniques for on-chip digital beam steering, optical signal processing, and laser control. 

Check out Voyant’s product spec sheets – the company shares a range vs Probability of detection graph for calibrated targets at a specific PFA. Voyant’s advisor Peter Stern took on the role of CEO.

This groundbreaking technology enables Voyant to mass-produce a LiDAR system similar to how computer chips are made. See more details about Voyant’s founding story and our conviction that silicon photonics will revolutionize 3D imaging and sensing just like it has made high-performance data center fiber optics affordable.

We are thrilled to announce that Voyant Photonics raised $15.4M in Series A funding and is ready to ship developer kits to its customers. The new funding was led by UP.Partners with participation from us at  LDV Capital, Contour Ventures, and serial entrepreneurs.

“When you fabricate a LiDAR system on a chip, the fabrication cost stays the same regardless of how many components you use. We will soon be selling LiDAR systems for a few hundred dollars and longer-term will sell them for less than a hundred dollars at scale,” says Chris Phare, the company’s co-founder and chief science officer. “Now that we can make LiDAR systems on semiconductor chips, we can make them better and less expensive with every development cycle, similar to Moore’s Law for computer chips,” he continues.

LiDAR-on-a-chip reduces the costs of LiDAR, making machine perception available for applications far beyond autonomous vehicles. “Our diverse customers in robotics, AGVs, mobility, industrial automation, and security all have one thing in common - they are building solutions that need to understand the world around them… That is what our LiDAR systems provide,” says Peter Stern, CEO at Voyant Photonics.