AEye Inc and a blank-check firm backed by financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald on Monday amended their merger agreement, valuing the lidar sensor maker at $1.52 billion, citing valuation changes of publicly traded lidar companies.
In February, AEye had agreed to go public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company CF Finance Acquisition Corp III, in a deal that valued the company at $2 billion.
The companies attributed the terms of the amended deal to "changing conditions" in the automotive lidar industry.
Lidar peers Ouster Inc and Peter Thiel-backed Luminar Technologies Inc, which also took the SPAC route to get publicly listed, have lost 10 percent and 22 percent of their value, respectively, since making their market debuts.
Founded in 2013 by former Lockheed Martin and NASA engineer Luis Dussan, AEye is one of several firms specializing in a relatively young technology that uses light-based sensors to generate a three-d…