Cepton
LidarUSA
New to Unitard
🤝 Acquired
Peak $1.5 BillionToday
~-90%
from peak
- 🦄Became a unicorn2021
- 📈Peak valuation$1.5 Billion ’21
- 💔Became a Unitard2022
- 💸Last valuation~$150M
Current status
Majority acquired by Koito; small-cap
The rise & fall
5 moments · 2016–2024The key moments.
2016
2016
Founded in San Jose
Jun Pei and Mark McCord start a lidar maker for cars and smart infrastructure.
Wikipedia
2021
2021
The peak: a $1.5B SPAC deal$1.5B
A blank-check merger values the lidar maker around $1.5B at the height of the sector's mania — unicorn status by press release.
Reuters
Feb 2022
Feb 2022
Hits Nasdaq as the lidar trade sours
By the time the de-SPAC closes, the sector's SPAC class is deep underwater; Cepton's shares follow.
Reuters
2022
2022
Slips out of the club
Lidar enthusiasm collapses and the market cap sinks far below $1B.
Reuters
2024
2024
Koito takes majority control
The Japanese auto-lighting giant — long a key partner and investor — moves to majority ownership, leaving Cepton a small-cap roughly 90% below its peak.
Reuters
How it happened
Cepton is a lidar maker for automotive and smart-infrastructure applications. It reached a roughly $1.5B valuation and went public via SPAC in early 2022. As lidar-sector enthusiasm collapsed, its shares fell sharply below $1B. Japanese auto-lighting firm Koito, a key partner and investor, took a majority stake, leaving Cepton a small-cap roughly 90% below its peak.
Source: De-SPAC 2022
Founders
- Jun Yeco-founderNo public profile matched
Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-19. See our methodology.
