2 years old memorized the periodic table, 17 years old left Stanford to start a startup, 25 years old became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world
American businessman Austin Russell is the founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies. Luminar Technologies specializes in machine-sensing technology primarily used to build self-driving cars.
Considered an optical prodigy, founding Luminar at the age of 17 and studying physics at Stanford University, the young man decided to drop out of college when he received a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship in 2012. a program sponsored by billionaire Peter Thiel to help nurture talented young entrepreneurs. His decision to follow his passion paid off.
Currently, Russell owns a fortune of $ 1.6 billion.
A child prodigy
Austin Russell keeps his life private. Information about the growth process of the youngest self-made billionaire in the world rarely appears in the media.
Besides Austin Kingsley Russell’s date of birth (March 13, 1995), no further information is available about his parents and siblings. He was considered a prodigy at a very young age. At just two years old, Russell was able to memorize the periodic table of the elements. When he turned 13, Russell decided to apply for his first patent for a recycling system product that reused groundwater from sprinklers. Russell spent the rest of his teenage years engaged in research activities at the Irvine Beckman Laser Institute at the University of California. However, he later enrolled at Stanford University.
Despite attending one of the most prestigious universities in the world, Russell claims to have learned most of his knowledge by watching YouTube videos and reading Wikipedia pages. Fortunately, Russell received the sum of $100,000 from the Peter Thiel Thiel Scholarship. He used this money to start his own company – the predecessor company of Luminar Technologies.
Building Luminar technology company
Russell founded Luminar Technologies at the age of 17 in California in 2012. Shortly after founding the company, Jason Eichenholz joined him as co-founder and chief technology officer. For the first five years, the couple operated the company in a non-public state. The original goal of Russell’s company was to develop and create lidar technology with improved resolution and range. The young man was able to do this by making many components himself instead of relying on devices on the market. Russell increased the vehicle’s safety response time to seven seconds at highway speeds.
Following improvements in the product, Russell decided to re-evaluate the performance standards of lidar systems. Normally, lidar operates at 905 nanometers, however Luminar’s lidar operates at 1,550 nanometers in the infrared range. This caused the vehicle’s signal to be out of range for visible light, making it safe for the human eye at higher power levels.
Let Luminar grow
After a period of “hidden” operation, Russell decided to take the company public with a call for investment in April 2017. The company then received a $36 million investment in a series A funding round. With this capital, they produced 10,000 car lidars from their factory established in Orlando. After a few months, Luminar announced a partnership with Toyota’s research and development division, the Toyota Research Institute. This is an autonomous vehicle, robotics and AI research division of one of Japan’s leading vehicle manufacturing companies. Toyota decided to use Luminar devices in their 2.1 test cars, which are a self-driving sedan system. And during the years that followed, Luminar had partnerships with many companies.
By 2018 they had a Seventh Generation Application-specific integrated circuit design or ASIC, which is a total integration technology. The company began establishing a branch and a location in Colorado Springs in April 2018. At the same time, the company also recruited many “talent” including former Uber CEO Brent Schwarz and former investment banker Tom Fennimore. Brent has assumed the position of Business Development Manager since September 2018 with Tom serving as the company’s new CFO starting in May 2020.
Earn Billions of Dollars Through Public Offerings
Eight years after the company’s founding, Luminar announced its initial public offering through a special-purpose acquisition of the company in August 2020. Shares of the company listed on NASDAQ and Luminar merge with Gores Metropoulos. Luminar’s estimated market capitalization is $3.4 billion, along with $400 million in cash from Gores Metropoulos and $170 million in additional capital from Peter Thiel, Alec Gores, Volvo Cars Tech Fund, etc. When Luminar went public on December 3, 2020, Russell retained his 83% stake in the company and assumed the role of chairman of the company. Currently, Luminar’s technology has been used by many companies, including SAIC Motor.
(Aggregate Forbes, SMCP, Luminar Tech)
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