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Velodyne LiDAR has gained a combined $150 million investment from co-investors Ford Motor and Baidu, China’s leading search engine company. Morgan Stanley acted as sole placement agent for this transaction.

David Hall, founder and CEO, Velodyne LiDAR, said: “LiDAR continues to prove itself as the critical sensor for safe autonomous vehicle operation. This investment will accelerate the cost reduction and scaling of Velodyne’s industry-leading LiDAR sensors, making them widely accessible and enabling mass deployment of fully autonomous vehicles. We are determined to help improve the goal of safety for automotive vehicles as soon as possible, as well as empower the efficiency autonomous systems offer.”

Over the last 10 years, Velodyne formulated four generations of hybrid solid-state LiDAR systems, making use of proprietary software and algorithms that interpret rich data gathered from the environment via highly accurate laser-based sensors to create high resolution 3D digital images used for mapping, localization, object identification and collision avoidance. Velodyne’s LIDAR solutions are capable of producing 300K to 2.2 million data points per second with a range up to 200 meters at centimeter-level accuracy.

Marta Hall, Velodyne president of business development, said: “We want the cost to be low enough to be used for all cars. We envision a safer world for the millions of automotive drivers across the globe.”

Velodyne anticipates an exponential rise in LiDAR sensor deployments in autonomous vehicles and ADAS applications, which will bring high revenue growth. In order to meet high demand, the company will expand its resources across engineering, operations and manufacturing. In line with this minority investment round, the Company plans to expand its board of directors to include two independent industry executives.

Earlier this month, Ford has announced its intention to launch a high-volume, fully autonomous vehicle as part of a ride-sharing service by 2021.