Shares of US lidar company Luminar Technologies (LAZR) rose as much as 20.8 per cent in intraday trading on Wednesday, April 21, as they poached executives from Tesla, Inc. and Intel Corp, while US stocks rose more than 13 per cent late in the day to their highest level in a week since April 14. Tesla, Inc. stopped falling and rose nearly 3 per cent.

On the news side, Alan Prescott, vice president of legal affairs and acting general counsel of Tesla, Inc., will move to Lunimar to serve as chief legal officer for 20 years in Intel Corp, and Trey Campbell, vice president of investor relations, will also join the same position of Lunimar.

The analysis pointed out that the departure of Alan Prescott after four years of work by Tesla, Inc. was regarded as his approval of lidar technology. This is not only because Tesla, Inc. CEO Musk has long denied the need for expensive lidar technology to develop self-driving cars, but also related to Alan Prescott's background in legal work at Ford, a traditional car giant, for more than a decade.

He also worked as a senior legal adviser in Uber's driverless cars division, where he was responsible for regulation, litigation, business, privacy and cyber security. With a long history in the automotive field, observers are paying close attention to his employment options. He also issued a statement supporting Lunimar's "pioneering development of key security technologies that will power the future of automation":

"I have devoted my career to automotive safety and innovation, so I look forward to helping to take Luminar to a new level and fulfilling my mission of making everyone's travel safer."

Prescott's emphasis on the word "safety" when he left seemed meaningful at a time when Tesla, Inc. faced a storm of Chinese consumer complaints, a fatal driving accident in the US, as well as a number of federal investigations and court lawsuits.

According to his personal LinkedIn profile, Prescott provided "guidance to Tesla, Inc. executives and the board of directors" and was responsible for all legal operations in North America, Europe and Asia to help the company meet the challenges of the automotive and energy industries.

It is worth noting that Prescott made an opening speech at last year's Tesla, Inc. shareholders' meeting and Battery Day and signed a letter on behalf of the company in response to the NHTSA investigation of public safety complaints and vehicle safety recalls.

The media found that Tesla, Inc. replaced three general counsel of the company in the year from December 2018 to December 2019, and has not appointed a formal general counsel since then, only by Prescott.

On March 8, a shareholder named Chase Gharrity filed a lawsuit accusing Musk of exposing Tesla, Inc. to potential billions of dollars in debt and market losses through crazy Twitter posts.

Because Musk and Tesla, Inc. reached a settlement agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) SEC, if CEO wants to post information on Twitter that may contain information that may be vital to Tesla, Inc. 's shareholders, it must obtain the approval of the company's general counsel in advance, but the position has been absent.

At the same time, the market speculated that Lunimar could successfully poach executives from Intel Corp, which was also related to the smooth cooperation between the company and Intel Corp's Mobileye department, which may have contributed to today's sharp rise in share prices.

Intel Corp bought Israel's Mobileye, which specializes in self-driving and advanced auxiliary driving technology, for $15.3 billion in 2017. Late last year, it was reported that Mobileye planned to develop its own sensors, causing the share price of Lunimar, which provides similar products, to plunge, but then Lunimar retorted that the partnership with Intel Corp Mobileye was "moving forward at full speed".

According to public data, Luminar, backed by Peter Thiel, the godfather of Silicon Valley venture capital, was listed on December 3, 2020 through a reverse merger with blank check company (SPAC) Gores Metropoulos, trading on Nasdaq under the symbol LAZR. It soared 28% on its first day of trading, with a market capitalization of about $7.8 billion, making 25-year-old founder Austin Russell the youngest billionaire in the world.

Since its listing, Luminar's share price has risen more than 90%, but it has basically halved since it entered the downward channel in early February.The company detailed its 2021 plan last month and expects annual revenue of $25 million to $30 million, double the $14 million in 2020 and up from the $26 million forecast in August last year, and is expected to increase its forward-looking orders by at least 40 per cent this year.

On March 18 this year, as a global leader in automotive lidar hardware and software technology, Luminar announced a strategic partnership with China's largest automaker, the Fortune Global Top 100 SAIC Group.

Luminar's industry-leading lidar and some of its Sentinel software systems will protect the self-driving function and advanced safety performance of SAIC's new mass production R brand intelligent electric vehicle. The R-brand smart electric vehicle project is scheduled for mass production in 2022, and the long-term goal of both sides is to achieve widespread standardization in all models.