Austin Russell, the billionaire founder of lidar manufacturer Luminar, has made an offer to acquire the company five months after being removed from the CEO position due to an ethics investigation.

On Friday morning, Russell submitted documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) detailing his acquisition plan. According to the proposal, his newly established company, Russell AI Labs, intends to purchase all outstanding Class A common stock of Luminar; however, the purchase price has not been disclosed.

The documents indicate that if the acquisition is successful, Luminar will remain publicly traded. Additionally, Russell AI Labs may seek to "acquire another larger global automotive technology company" and merge it with Luminar to "create a unified technology platform business (referred to as 'Luminar 2.0')." If this merger comes to fruition, Russell may also consider investing in the newly merged entity.

The acquisition proposal was put forward on October 14 and was described in the documents as being made "at the suggestion of certain Luminar shareholders" and "at the invitation of some board members," though specific names were not mentioned. As of now, neither Luminar nor Russell AI Labs has responded to requests for comment.

The suddenness and unexpected nature of this acquisition proposal parallels Russell's ousting as CEO in May of this year. Luminar announced that Russell had resigned during the release of its first-quarter financial results on May 19, subsequently appointing former Xerox executive Paul Ricci as CEO. At that time, Luminar did not disclose the specific reasons for Russell's resignation but mentioned that the board's audit committee had conducted an "investigation into business conduct and ethics." To date, the company has not disclosed the results of this investigation. Furthermore, Luminar has faced multiple lawsuits from shareholders regarding Russell’s dismissal and the manner of the related disclosures.

It is noteworthy that this is not Russell's first attempt to make an acquisition. In 2023, he proposed to acquire Forbes, but the plan ultimately fell through due to some participating investors failing to fulfill their commitments. The acquisition process also faced controversy at the time over alleged connections to a Russian oligarch.

According to Luminar's previous statement, Russell retains a position on the company's board and is expected to “support the new CEO during the transition period and in technology matters.” However, from a certain perspective, he is no longer involved in company affairs—since being ousted as CEO, he has not signed any documents submitted by the company to the SEC in his capacity as a board member.

Meanwhile, in September, Russell co-founded Russell AI Labs alongside Marcus Shaffer, Chief Technology Officer and board member at Mercedes-Benz Group AG, and Murtaza Ahmed, a former partner at SoftBank Vision Fund. The new company claims to be positioned to "support and build transformative AI and frontier technology firms," and has already invested $300 million in agentic AI company Emergence.