Innovating the Future: Our Story

Our Mission

Our goal is to make 3D sensing ubiquitous, creating a safer world and enhancing quality of life

Lumotive’s transformative optical semiconductors are enabling Lidar 2.0 for consumer, mobility, and industrial markets. The company’s Light Control Metasurface (LCM™) optical semiconductors utilize revolutionary, patented beam-steering technology to deliver an unprecedented combination of best-in-class performance, cost, reliability, and size. Lumotive’s LCMs enable the world's first software-defined lidar with its digital beam steering capabilities.
Awards and Recognition

SPIE 2022
PRISM Award

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CES 2022
Innovation Awards

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Business Intelligence 2022
Excellence in AI

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Edison Award 2022
Winner

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Sensors Converge 2021
Startup of the Year

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EETimes Silicon 100 2021
Startups to Watch

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Leadership Team

Sam Heidari, Ph.D.

CEO

Gleb Akselrod, Ph.D.

CTO, co-founder

Apurva Jain, Ph.D.

VP of Engineering

Axel Fuchs, Ph.D.

VP of Business Development

Kevin Camera, Ph.D.

VP OF PRODUCT

Rakinder Grover

VP of Strategy and Partnerships

Board of Directors

Sam Heidari, Ph.D.

BOARD MEMBER

Gleb Akselrod, Ph.D.

BOARD MEMBER

CONRAD BURKE

BOARD MEMBER

LARRY FROEBER

Board Member

Sam Heidari, Ph.D.

CEO, Board Member

Dr. Sam Heidari brings three decades of extensive management experience in the semiconductor sector. He currently holds the position of CEO at Lumotive, serves as Chairman at Arctic Semiconductor, and advises multiple technology startups and an investment institution. Previously, he served as CEO and Chairman at Quantenna Communications, CEO at Doradus Technologies, and CTO at Ikanos.

Dr. Heidari has made valuable contributions to the industry by serving on the Global Semiconductor Alliance Board of Directors and the advisory boards for both the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Departments at the University of Southern California.

His accomplishments have been recognized through esteemed awards, including being named the 2014 Executive of the Year by the Golden Bridge Awards and the 2017 Executive of the Year by UBM. Dr. Heidari is a senior member of the IEEE and holds more than 50 U.S. and international patents.

He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University.

Gleb Akselrod, Ph.D.

CTO, Co-Founder, Board Member

Dr. Gleb Akselrod has more than 10 years experience in photonics and optoelectronics. Prior to Lumotive he was the Director for Optical Technologies at Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, WA, where he led a program on the commercialization of optical metamaterial and nanophotonic technologies. Before that, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics at Duke University, where his work focused on plasmonic nanoantennas and metasurfaces. He completed his Ph.D. in 2013 at MIT, where he was a Hertz Foundation Fellow and an NSF Graduate Fellow. For his dissertation, he studied the transport and coherence of excitons in materials used in solar cells and OLEDs. Prior to MIT, Dr. Akselrod was at Landauer, Inc. where he developed and patented a fluorescent radiation sensor that is currently deployed by the US Army. He holds more than 10 US Patents and has published over 25 scientific articles. Gleb received his B.S. in Engineering Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Apurva Jain, Ph.D.

VP of Engineering

Dr. Apurva Jain has over 10 years of experience in optoelectronics, product development, program management and precision manufacturing. His expertise is in building and managing teams to transform early concepts into commercially successful products employing best design and manufacturing practices. Prior to Lumotive he was the Director of New Product Development at Avo Photonics, a private-label design and contract manufacturing firm. There he worked on over 20 optoelectronic products from concept through volume manufacturing for industrial sensing, medical diagnostics and telecom markets. Dr. Jain received his Ph.D. in Optics from CREOL, University of Central Florida and B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from McGill University.

Axel Fuchs, Ph.D.

VP of Business Development

Axel Fuchs is a global technology executive based in Silicon Valley whose expertise is turning new technologies into profitable business in automotive, consumer electronics, security, IoT and industrial markets. Over the past three decades Axel has an established record of success managing critical aspects of high-tech global businesses, including research and development, systems engineering, product management and business development. After completing his Doctorate in Control Engineering at Darmstadt University of Technology, Dr. Fuchs started his career at Daimler building self-driving cars and trucks in the early 1990s. He arrived in Silicon Valley in 1995 to co-found the Daimler Benz Research and Technology office in Palo Alto. There, Axel and his team built the first “Internet Car” which won the Smithsonian Computerworld Award. In 1999 he joined Motorola’s newly established Telematics Division, helping to productize connected cars. Since 2002 Axel has held business leadership positions with start-up companies in Silicon Valley, including SimpleDevices, Telenav, Wheelz and most recently Quanergy.

Kevin Camera, Ph.D.

VP of Product

Dr. Kevin Camera is a proven leader in hardware/software co-design, product development, and strategy for edge and embedded computing systems. He started his career as co-founder of a successful startup, building real-time software-defined prototyping platforms that delivered some of the world's first 5G wireless transmissions. His contributions both leading engineering departments and as a product executive at Velodyne Lidar have already made an impact on the industry through tens of thousands of sensors shipped and actively deployed worldwide. Dr. Camera holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Rakinder Grover

VP of Strategy and Partnerships

Rakinder Grover is a technology executive with over 25 years of experience. His expertise is in business management, business development and venture capital investing in high-growth, innovation-led companies. Prior to Lumotive, Rakinder held various management roles at Dolby Laboratories and Ikanos. As a Managing Director at Walden International, he was a venture capital investor in early-stage semiconductor and communications startups. Rakinder holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Texas and a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology.

Conrad Burke

Board Member

Conrad is based in Silicon Valley and is managing partner at MetaVC Partners, LLC. He is an entrepreneur and investor, building successful new businesses in renewable energy, communications, nanomaterials, and biosciences. He was founder and CEO of energy materials startup, Innovalight (acquired by DuPont) and was venture partner at Sevin Rosen Funds and Invention Science Fund (ISF). Some of his past and current board responsibilities include Capella Photonics (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent), Lumotive, Imagia, and the advisory boards of Aelurus (acquired by Broadcom), InnerAnalytics and Cendana Capital. For three years, Conrad served on the board of SolarPower Europe - the European solar industry association. He was a Technology Pioneer at the World Economic Forum in Davos for renewable energy innovations and he is a recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year™ award. Conrad has extensive international experience having worked and lived in Japan, Germany, the U.K. at AT&T, NEC and Lucent Technologies. He has a MS in Physics from Trinity College and a BS in Physics from University College Dublin in Ireland.

Larry Froeber

Board Member

Larry Froeber is the Chief Financial Officer at Intellectual Ventures (IV), responsible for managing critical corporate functions including finance, tax, treasury, information technology, investor relations, and fundraising. Larry also provides oversight of remaining Invention Science Fund activities. In addition, Larry has served as a board member for several IV spinout companies. He currently sits on the boards of Imagia and Lumotive, and previously served as board member for Modern Electron and Purposeful. Larry joined IV's finance leadership team as senior director of finance in 2008 and became vice president of finance in 2009. In 2015, he was appointed deputy chief financial officer before assuming his current role in 2016.

Prior to joining IV, Larry served as the Chief Financial Officer at one of Washington State’s largest and fastest-growing privately held mortgage banks, where he provided oversight on corporate strategy, fundraising, secondary market mortgage sales, investor relations, and finance and tax. Prior to this role, he was vice president and head of finance and administration for Ignition Partners, a Seattle-area venture capital firm that invests in early-stage software and information technology companies, with approximately $1 billion in capital under management. At Ignition, he was responsible for the firm’s financial operations, reporting, tax, treasury, administration services, and investor relations.

Larry earned a business degree from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business where he remains an active university supporter. He has been a licensed certified public accountant in both the state of Washington and the state of Oregon.