Cepton Continues Global Expansion With Appointments of Key Lidar Industry Veterans

Growing Japan and Asia presence builds on previously announced partnership with Koito

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Cepton Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of state-of-the-art, intelligent, lidar-based solutions, has appointed industry veteran Andrew Klaus as country manager for Japan, marking its continued expansion into the Japanese and Asian markets.

Klaus joins Cepton with almost 30 years’ experience across the lidar, semiconductor and automotive industries. His experience spans across several well-known semiconductor companies including Toshiba, Marvell, Conexant, and LSI. Most recently, Klaus was a country manager in Japan for Innoviz.

Speaking of his appointment, Klaus said: “It’s such an exciting time to join Cepton in Japan. Industry adoption of lidar technology is growing at a rapid pace, driven by the burgeoning mobility market and the worldwide acceleration of automation and digitization.”

“With Cepton’s announced partnership with automotive giant Koito, and our superior high performance lidars and smart lidar solutions, there is strong interest in Japan and other parts of Asia for what Cepton has to offer. I look forward to working with the team and our customers to build on our success,” he added.

Klaus’ role will initially focus on building Cepton’s market share in Japan, where the company has experienced growing demand for its high-performance lidar solutions across automotive, auto-adjacent and non-automotive sectors.

The past six months have witnessed transformational growth for Cepton across multiple markets. Earlier this year, Cepton concluded a successful Series C financing round led by Koito Manufacturing Co., Ltd., the world’s largest automotive lighting Tier 1. Around the same time, Cepton expanded its business team in Europe with the appointment of two Directors of Product Management and Marketing.

Henri Haefner, based out of Frankfurt, will lead Cepton’s efforts in the autonomous mobility sector in EMEA. Haefner has over 13 years of experience in product, account and program management through his past roles at top automotive supplier TRW Automotive (ZF) and lidar supplier Velodyne. He will focus on ADAS programs at major automotive OEMs, AV programs and Tier 1 partnerships.

Based out of Munich and most recently at Innoviz, Klaus Wagner will utilize his over 30 years of experience across defence, semiconductors/electronics and lidar to support Cepton’s growth in auto-adjacent and non-automotive markets such as intelligent transportation systems (ITS), smart spaces, mapping and other industrial applications.

“During this period of intense industry focus on autonomous mobility and smart city infrastructure, it’s important that we build a great team to drive the next phase of Cepton’s growth. That is why I am so glad to have Andrew, Henri and Klaus join as key members of the Cepton team, as part of our continued growth even under the broader economic conditions,” explained Dr. Jun Pei, CEO of Cepton. “Their appointments also come at a critical point in Cepton’s evolution. Through the second half of 2020, our customers can expect more of our path-breaking innovations, the launch of new market-leading solutions and deeper collaboration with partners across key markets.”

Powered by Cepton’s patented Micro Motion Technology (MMT^®) platform – a frictionless, mirrorless, rotation-free lidar architecture capable of high resolution and long-range 3D imaging – Cepton’s lidar solutions are being shipped worldwide, serving a range of commercial applications. These include automotive (ADAS), autonomous vehicles (AV), intelligent transportation systems (ITS), smart spaces (crowd analytics, security, safety) mapping and more. Founded by Dr. Jun Pei and Dr. Mark McCord in 2016, Cepton focuses on bringing forward lidar innovations to achieve an optimal balance of performance, reliability and cost efficiency for mass market lidars.

About Cepton Technologies, Inc.

Cepton provides state-of-the-art, intelligent, lidar-based solutions for a range of markets such as autonomous driving, ADAS, intelligent traffic systems, security, crowd analytics, and industrial robotics. Cepton’s patented MMT^®-based lidar technology enables reliable, scalable and cost-effective solutions that deliver long range, high resolution 3D perception for smart applications.

Founded in 2016 and led by industry veterans with over two decades of collective experience across a wide range of advanced lidar and imaging technologies, Cepton is focused on the mass market commercialization of high performance, high quality lidar solutions. Cepton is headquartered in San Jose, California, USA, with presence in Germany, Canada, UK, Japan and India to serve a fast-growing global customer base. For more information, visit www.cepton.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Contacts

Faithy Li, Cepton Technologies, media@cepton.com