Koito deals to acquire longtime partner Cepton

Publicly traded lidar company Cepton has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by automotive tier one supplier and longtime collaborator Koito. Per the agreement, Koito will acquire all outstanding capital stock for $3.17 per share in an all-cash transaction. Following the transaction’s close, Cepton will operate as a privately held, indirect subsidiary of Koito in the U.S.

“Our partnership with Koito will provide us with unique access to a broader range of opportunities and resources and help us stay resilient to industry challenges in a way no other lidar company can,” said Cepton co-founder and CEO Jun Pei. “This will position us as a leading automotive lidar company for years to come, as Cepton continues to execute current automotive programs and actively manage future OEM initiatives.”

The acquisition complements Koito’s existing sensor technology portfolio, while providing Cepton with greater financial stability and scalability to commercialize its lidar technology.

Cepton and Koito have partnered since 2017 to industrialize high-performance lidar solutions for mass-market automotive, smart infrastructure, and industrial applications. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025.

According to Cepton, its directional lidar technology, targeting the automotive lidar and ADAS market(s), reportedly takes up 75% less space and consumes less than 50% power compared to similar performing scanning systems. The systems do not require active cooling to maintain performance, and feature proprietary custom system-on-chip technology for back-end point cloud processing.

Founded in 2016 by technologists from Stanford University, Cepton went public in 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, which at the time valued the company at an enterprise value of approximately $1.5 billion on a cash-free, debt-free basis.