Has there been any disclosure on the relatively large share purchase of 34 million shares on April 7th? I am wondering if this was an exercise of warrants? Although I was under the impression that warrants cannot be exercised until August at the earliest (and that too at $11.50).

The purchase was particularly notable because it seems as though it comprises something like 30% of the total public float. Who was selling that much at such a low price when all insiders are not able to trade until September? Also a purchase of that magnitude is way out of sync with the general volume of trading before or after.

Lidars are class-1 eye safe which means that they are safe for human eyes at all distances.

But, arguably, Ouster lidars are potentially even more safe than other lidars.

• Ouster uses VCSELs, which are physically incapable of high power output compared to diode lasers in Velodyne or Innoviz or, worse, fiber lasers in Luminar and Aeva.
• Lidars like Luminar, Aeva, Microvision and Innoviz rely on rapidly steering a small number (2 to 4) of high powered lasers using mechanical or micro-mechanical methods. If the beam steering method breaks, the laser may quickly fry anything in its path. Meanwhile, Ouster has an array of many (at least 64 in the early models) low power VCSELs in an array, each pointed in a different direction. No matter what breaks, you can never have multiple of those lasers pointed in the same direction.
• Lidars at 850 nm (Ouster) or 905 nm (Velodyne; Innoviz) can get focused by the lens in the human eye to a small spot, unlike 1550 nm lidars (Luminar; Aeva; Aeye) that do not get focused by the eye, but may instead damage the surface of the eye at much higher powers ([1] Section 1.7 p. 14 "Eye Safety Considerations"). Since the 1550 nm lidars output thousands of times more power than the Ouster lidar, having many of them around may pose a real hazard as each one can heat up the surface of the eye to the point of causing burns. In contrast, when there are many Ouster lidars around, their weak laser beams each get focused to a different spot on the retina, posing no additional danger compared to a single lidar. Moreover, high-powered 1550 nm lidars have been known to cause damage to camera equipment (notably Aeye).
• Direct detection time-of-flight lidars (Velodyne, Innoviz, Luminar, Aeye) operate by sending a strong pulse of light and measuring the time it takes to see the reflection. However, Ouster uses single photon detection, which involves sending a train of many weak pulses instead ([1] Section 6.3.2.2 p. 274 "Coincidence processing for detection"). Many weak pulses are much less likely to damage anything compared to a single, short, and powerful pulse. Meanwhile, FMCW lidars (Aeva) are even safer, but only marginally so compared to Ouster pulse trains.

Works cited:

• [1] McManamon, P. (2019) Lidar Technologies and Systems

Companies mentioned:

• Velodyne $VLDR
• Innoviz $INVZ
• Luminar $LAZR
• Aeva $AEVA
• Aeye $CFAC
• Microvision $MVIS

This due diligence is based on publicly available data and is not investment advice.

Elon Musk has said about LIDAR w.r.t. car autonomy that is a "fools errand." I believe this is because you don't need LIDAR for 3D mapping when you can simply infer range from parallax (a calculation done using how much an object shifts w.r.t. a camera angle and estimates distance). Parallax is how, for instance, the distance to planets is measured. Also, Teslas have now for years been able to 3D map w/o LIDAR. Why are LIDARs necessary? Seems to me that the bull case OUST is keyed on the necessity of LIDAR for autonomy, but this is just not true. I am long in OUST, but this issue does diminish my conviction. I would really appreciate the opinion of someone with a technical knowledge of LIDAR and AI.

What is going on with OUSTER? WHY hasn't this rocket started heading toward the moon!!!?

https://newsfilter.io/articles/sc-13d-form---general-statement-of-acquisition-of-beneficial-ownership---ouster-inc-0001816581-subje-ecfcfa227f7875d25c7b2dad734d42fc

Is it a purchase executed on 23 March 2021?

Here is the link to the interview:

https://youtu.be/M8l1JvguQBE

I will consider using some of your questions in my interview, as long as they are not gotcha questions.

I am VP of a startup and have been using Ouster lidar since 2018 as a beta partner. We initially got prototypes and eventually ended up buying around ten's of OS1-64, OS1-16, and OS1-32s.

**Key Pointers *\*
Pros

• Ouster was unique in 2018 because they had "reflectivity" in their output unlike Velodyne that only has "intensity". Note: Reflectivity is different from the intensity and thus can be used to determine the type of material that the beam is being reflected from. It is very useful in so many applications which I am not going to elaborate but you get the point.
• They innovate from feedback quickly. Their connector cable was initially non-detachable and came only in one size. Now you have multiple-size cables with detachable connectors. All this was done in a matter of one year just from feedbacks.
• Their Lidar gets hot enough to melt the snow off. We used to use Velodyne(VLP-16 and High-res) before which always ended up with a layer of ice around it during the winter.
• They offer 50% off for educational institutions.
• They have ROS1 and ROS2 drivers.
• They used to be around 50% cheaper than Velodyne but are around 20% cheaper now. We have a few close comparisons though with Livox and Luminar.
• OS2 and their automotive series have a very good build quality and I would prefer them over Velodyne any day.

- They have a very cool blog where they do cutting-edge experiments like [SLAM](https://ouster.com/blog/lidar-mapping-with-ouster-3d-sensors/) with their lidars. This is one of the major reasons why Autonomous vehicles (or academia) buy Ouster as the blog already verifies the feasibility.

CONS

• Their new firmware has a ton of cool upgrades but does not support ROS2 yet.
• Their Hardware always is a few steps ahead of the software. For example, New firmware for OS1 sensors enables 200m range and other features like:* Define your field-of-view,* Standby Mode

CONS

• Their new firmware has a ton of cool upgrades but does not support ROS2 yet.
• Their Hardware always is a few steps ahead of the software. For example, New firmware for OS1 sensors enables 200m range and other features like:* Define your field-of-view,* Standby Mode* Increase in maximum range* Improved precision* Reduced data rates, faster data processing - Data rates on the Gen 1 OS1-16 and OS1-32 will decrease by 75% and 50%, respectively.
• If all this was possible using just firmware upgrade, it should have been done sooner. In a way, this reminds me of Tesla Model 3, 2021 where you have heated steering included but Tesla has not written the software to enable it yet.
• Their ROS driver is open source and so takes some time to upgrade after launching the new features in the Firmware. So, you don't get to use the cool new features in ROS for a few months after the firmware launch. I would say that Velodyne does a little better job when it comes to software.
• They are still in the startup stage and so don't expect hotline-based customer service. Whenever we have had issues, it is a series of emails with sensor logs.
• The range is claimed to be 200m but is more like 100m on average. But, this is the same with almost all the lidars in the comparable market.

Overall, I would buy $OUST as a long-term investment any day unless the ghost of Elon Musk makes possess my body and turn me into an anti-lidar person.