Why Luminar Stock Is Soaring Today

Luminar (NASDAQ: LAZR) stock is seeing another day of big gains Tuesday. The company's share price was up 12.3% as of 12:15 p.m. ET despite the S&P 500 index being down 0.7% and the Nasdaq Composite index being down 1.5%. The lidar specialist's stock had been up as much as 22.6% earlier in the daily session.

Luminar is surging today following Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang's keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last night. The tech luminary outlined new initiatives in the autonomous vehicle space and confirmed that his company will continue to use lidar technologies.

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Luminar stock surges as Nvidia touts lidar tech

Luminar stock skyrocketed yesterday as investors bet that Huang would mention the lidar specialist or the technology in general during his CES keynote address. While Luminar didn't get a shoutout, Nvidia's leader indicated that lidar would be a key part of his company's strategy in the autonomous vehicle space. The mention has been enough to power significant gains for the smaller tech specialist's stock today.

But while Luminar didn't get a direct shoutout, another player in the lidar space did. Nvidia will be working with Aurora Innovation (NASDAQ: AUR) and using its high-end lidar with radar and cameras to advance the capabilities of driverless trucks. Aurora Innovation's share price was up 36.9% as of this writing.

What comes next for Luminar?

Back in 2021, Nvidia announced it had selected Luminar's lidar tech as a key component of its autonomous vehicle platform. While there hasn't been much news on the partnership in the subsequent years, Luminar did announce that Mercedes-Benz had started using its lidar-based automatic emergency steering, running on Nvidia's DRIVE Orin processors, at the beginning of 2024.

While Nvidia's recently announced partnership with Aurora Innovation makes it clear that the artificial intelligence (AI) leader plans to make lidar technologies a key part of its autonomous driving platform, it's unclear whether Luminar will score new wins with the tech giant. The previously established relationship between the two companies suggests that continued collaboration is a possibility, but investors should move forward with the understanding that the lidar specialist's stock gains today are based on speculation.

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Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.