$3B TO ZERO - HOW LUMINAR COLLAPSED

Summary from the TLDR Founders newsletter

Austin Russell became one of the youngest self-made billionaires when Luminar went public in 2020. By December 2025, the lidar company filed for Chapter 11. This article digs into what happened in between - Luminar bet everything on Volvo, which kept expanding its order from 39,500 sensors to 1.1 million over three years. Then, Volvo made lidar optional instead of standard, cutting volumes by 90%. There's a lot to unpack here about concentration risk, why "lifetime volume" projections aren't the same as purchase orders, and what happens when your only customer changes their mind.