Luminar announced several new additions to its technical leadership. Taner Ozcelik, the founder of Nvidia's automotive business, joins Luminar as executive vice president and general manager to oversee product development, R&D, program management, and Luminar's semiconductor subsidiaries. Taner Ozcelik (Ph.D.) joins as executive vice president and general manager.

He is responsible for R&D, product development, program management, IT, platform partnerships, and Luminar's semiconductor subsidiaries. Prior to Luminar, he founded Nvidia's automotive business and scaled it over the course of a decade to a multi-hundred million dollar revenue business. He most recently served as senior vice president and general manager at ON Semiconductor Corporation, where he transformed the intelligent sensing business and led it to become the worldwide camera market leader in automotive and robotics with approximately one billion dollars in revenue.

These new executives join a string of impressive, senior technical hires at Luminar spanning manufacturing, business development, engineering and IP. Luminar has also welcomed the following executives: Jackie Chen (Ph.D) has joined as head of China: Chen is responsible for driving the expansion of Luminar's business in China. Prior to Luminar, Chen served as President at Harman International, China, a leading Tier 1 automotive supplier and lifestyle solution provider for professional consumer audio products, where he led the business to one billion in revenue.

Prior to that, he served as CTO and Automotive Division head at Schaeffler Group in China and Asia Pacific. Rimjhim Dasgupta has joined as chief of staff to EVP & GM and vice president of program management: Dasgupta brings extensive engineering program management experience, leading teams from concept to production. Most recently, she served as a chief of staff in Intel's Emerging Growth and Incubation Group, including managing its silicon engineering team for lidar and radar.

Prior to that, she held senior operational and technical program management roles at Synaptics, Apple and AMD. Anders Grunnet-Jepsen (Ph.D.) has joined as head of advanced development: Grunnet-Jepsen joined Luminar after serving as the chief technology officer for Intel's RealSense Group, developing and producing lidar and 3D camera systems. Having been a CTO and founder, Dr. Grunnet-Jepsen brings experience building and leading high-performing teams developing and scaling cutting edge technology. At Luminar, he is driving the development of next generation lidar and related technologies in addition to advanced manufacturing technologies.

Chris Lubeck (Ph.D.), has joined as head of intellectual property: Lubeck joined Luminar to lead its IP efforts and strategy, enabled by the largest lidar patent portfolio of its kind in the industry. Prior to Luminar, Chris served as the chief IP counsel at Tesla, and well as a similar role at ServiceNow. Chris also served as counsel to Apple during the smartphone patent wars of the last decade.

Chris' leadership will enable the company to vigorously defend its intellectual property rights and leadership in the industry.