Israeli "Innoviz" will supply LIDAR sensors to an automotive group in a deal worth $ 4 billion

Innoviz from Rosh HaAyin has been chosen to be the official and direct supplier of LIDAR sensors to one of the largest automotive groups in the world. This is a group that holds a share of more than 10% of the global car market and sells millions of cars a year. The deal is worth $ 4 billion. This is the explanation for the surprising jump of its share by 10% on Friday on the Nasdaq stock exchange, a day when most of the shares actually fell.
Sales under the current agreement are expected to be spread over eight years and will begin in three years, after the completion of the joint development that will integrate the company's lidars within the various models of the automaker.
Ydar is a sensing detector that replaces the human eye in autonomous vehicles or with elements of autonomous driving. The lidar also includes a software component and a decoding layer, which should allow for better vision than the human eye and reduce the chance of mistakes and road accidents.
Invis' first-generation detectors are already integrated in the models of the German car manufacturer BMW, but in contrast to the current agreement in which the Israeli company is a direct supplier, in front of BMW it works as a subcontractor.
Winning the current contract, which Invis has faced in the last two years against a large part of the 60 players in the lidar market, is a life-changing event for the company.
To date, its future order backlog has totaled $ 2.6 billion, most of which was based on the contract with BMW. The new contract bounces expected orders to $ 6.6 billion.
Beyond the point significance for Invis, it is also important news for the global lidar market. The main front against the detectors comes from Alon Musk, founder and CEO of electric car maker Tesla, who has been claiming for several years that the future is in cameras that mimic the human eye, because Lidars are both very expensive and insufficiently sensitive. Invis' contract is the largest to date In the automotive industry in the field of lidar.
Omar Kilf, co-founder and CEO of Invis, explains that in the new generation detectors provided to the major automaker, improvements have been made in resolution, range and the rate of receiving the image along with a 70% reduction in costs. "We expect the deal to affect the entire industry that has been waiting for a decision of this magnitude, and for Invis the scope will further increase as more companies within the group adopt our platform," Kielf said.
Invis was the first Israeli company to be issued through a merger with Spock. It began trading on the NASDAQ a little over a year ago at a value of $ 1.4 billion after raising $ 371 million. Since the IPO, Invis' share has fallen by 62.5%.
At this point the company's revenue is negligible at the level of $ 5 million throughout 2021, while the high investment in research and development, which amounted to $ 93 million, led it to a loss of $ 157 million in the bottom line.
However, the agreement with BMW is expected to start generating significant revenue towards the end of 2022 and at the time of the merger with Spock, Invis expected revenue of about $ 200 million in 2024 and a jump to half a billion dollars in 2025. The new contract now signed should dramatically improve the forecast for 2025. Invis was founded in 2016 by Kielf together with Oren Rosenzweig, Oren Buskila and Amit Steinberg, who all served together in the technology unit of the Intelligence Corps (81).