NEXT Semiconductor Announces Availability of its' Full Waveform Capture Digital LiDAR Processor

The NXLR1 Lidar Processor Unit (LPU) enables enhanced long range LiDAR perception for automotive ADAS and autonomous vehicles.

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 20, 2025  -- NEXT Semiconductor Technologies has developed a LiDAR Processor System-On-Chip (SoC) component to address the growing market for LiDAR sensors sourcing data for AI-enhanced autonomous vehicles. The immediate addressable market for LiDAR sensors includes on-orbit satellites, aerial drones, automotive advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), and industrial robotics comprising a $10B+ market in 2030 according to MarketsAndMarkets.

The NXLR1 is the first SoC to integrate 12-channels of high precision 16-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) sampling at up to 2 billion samples per second each with proprietary Full Waveform Capture (FWC) pulse processing integrated into a single chip. The NXLR1 operates at the center of a LiDAR system controlling the firing of laser pulses, digitizing the full pulse returns, and analyzing the digitized return signals to deliver curated metadata downstream via high-speed serial links. This fully integrated monolithic SoC offers 10X power efficiency and 10X cost benefits over legacy hardware platforms using general purpose FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays). The NXLR1 delivers enhanced perception in long range LiDAR systems leveraging high precision data conversion and proprietary signal processing while simultaneously reducing the workload of downstream AI processors.

"Full Waveform Capture LiDAR offers superior machine vision with precise spatial mapping of any environment enabling vehicles to navigate with maximum awareness. Our focus has been to integrate reconfigurable LiDAR sensor processing into an advanced FinFET CMOS device to deliver the end game solution for LiDAR sensors" said Michael Kappes, President and Chief Technology Officer at NEXT Semiconductor Technologies.

Evaluation systems are available upon request with engineering samples of the NXLR1 to be available in Q1-2026.

NEXT Semiconductor Technologies is a fabless semiconductor and sensor equipment company focused on high-reliability digital sensors enabling autonomy and connectivity for AI in motion.