Aeva Technologies

FMCW technology from Aeva measures both distance and instantaneous velocity for every pixel directly from the sensor, without requiring successive frames to estimate motion, which is how time-of-flight systems operate. The continuous-wave approach also provides immunity to interference from other lidar sensors and sunlight, as each photon returning to the receiver is coherently detected and validated. This architecture produces a lower data burden on the vehicle's perception computer because velocity is a measured value rather than a computationally inferred one.

Aeva has publicly disclosed a production program with Daimler Truck for commercial vehicle applications and was named as a sensor supplier for the Mercedes-Benz drive pilot conditional automated driving system. In January 2024, the company announced delivery of its first production-intent samples to a major German automotive OEM, signaling progression into the industrialization phase. The company targets start of production in the 2025–2026 timeframe, subject to customer program cadences.

Co-founders Soroush Salehian and Mina Rezk jointly lead Aeva. Rezk serves as Chief Technology Officer and is the principal architect of the company's FMCW lidar-on-chip platform. Salehian is the CEO and previously held roles at Apple in procurement and supply chain for the special projects group, giving the founding team a blend of technical depth and operational experience relevant to scaling a hardware business.

Aeva merged with InterPrivate Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2021 under the ticker AEVA. The transaction provided approximately $560 million in gross proceeds to fund the company's path to volume production, including a $200 million private investment in public equity from Sylebra Capital and other institutional investors, per company filings.

Although automotive is Aeva's primary near-term commercialization focus, its silicon photonics platform has applications in industrial automation, where perception of moving machinery and personnel at long ranges is critical, and in consumer devices where the single-chip architecture offers miniaturization potential. The company has suggested but not publicly disclosed commercialization timelines for these verticals.

Soroush Salehian and Mina Rezk previously worked at Apple's special projects group, but there is no public record of an ongoing commercial, equity, or supply relationship between Aeva Technologies and Apple. The founders' experience developing complex hardware systems at scale informs Aeva's manufacturing approach, but the company operates independently and has no disclosed arrangement with their former employer.

Aeva's FMCW architecture inherently provides interference immunity because the coherent detection system only accepts photons matching its own transmission frequency and modulation pattern. In practical terms, multiple Aeva-equipped vehicles can operate in close proximity without cross-talk blinding, a challenge that conventional pulsed lidar systems address through mechanisms such as time-domain channel hopping or statistical filtering, per the company's published technical papers.