Bloomberg News reports that Luminar Technologies Inc recruited Christopher “CJ” Moore, a manager related to Apple Inc’s car project and a former director of Autopilot associated with Tesla Inc, for leading global software development.
Impacts of the recruitment news
Moore, who got associated with Apple in August, will be leading Luminar’s software team to develop autonomous safety features integrated with lidar, or laser sensors, and the auto parts firm remarked in a statement on Wednesday. The shares of Luminar surged by as much as 8.2% and were found to be trading by up 4.8% at 12.09 pm in New York.
This departure from Apple’s car project is part of the continuing changes in the project. Over the past two years, approximately the entire management team of Apple Car has left. At the beginning of this month, Ian Goodfellow, another director on the project, left to join Alphabet Inc’s DeepMind. Simultaneously, Apple recruited new managers from Rivian, Ford, and the other players in the car industry.
Orlando, Luminar, Florida-based, went public through a $3.4 billion reverse merger in 2020 and has agreed with Mercedes Benz, SAIC Motor Corp, and Volvo Car AB to provide laser sensors to enable semi-autonomous driving in passenger vehicles.
Bloomberg News reports that Luminar stated that it had hired Taner Ozcelik, a veteran of Nvidia Corp’s automobile business, to lead product development. Shares of Apple dropped less than 1%.
