Luminar skyrockets as much as 44% after striking deal with Nvidia for self-driving car technology

• Luminar stock shot up as much as 44% after a new self-driving car deal with Nvidia.
• Nvidia plans to implement Luminar's lidar technology in a new autonomous vehicle reference platform.

Shares of Luminar Technologies Inc. jumped Tuesday after it announced Nvidia Corp. is using its technology in a new self-driving vehicle collaboration.

The stock was up as much as 44% in pre-market trading before paring gains. The shares were trading higher by about 20%, at $21.14 as of 10:15 a.m. ET.

Luminar said its Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) technology will be part of the sensor suite of the Nvidia Drive Hyperion autonomous vehicle reference platform.

Luminar Technologies specializes in long-range Lidar products, with the goal of making widely available autonomous driving technology. In addition to inking a deal with Nvidia, Luminar also made a deal with Volvo earlier this year. The tech company will report earnings on Thursday later this week.

Nvidia, meanwhile, is looking to lead the way into the metaverse era with a slate of new tools.

At the company's virtual GPU Technology Conference, the chip maker announced the rollout of several products as an expansion of its Omniverse Enterprise platform. Nvidia topped a $700 billion valuation for the first time last week.

"Nvidia has led the modern compute revolution, and the industry sees them as doing the same with autonomous driving," Luminar CEO Austin Russell said.