



“It’s been insane, everything, every day that we’ve had to go through, scaling this up. Now 26, Austin was recently crowned the world’s youngest self-made billionaire on the Forbeslist, after his company went public in December of 2020, offering shares on Nasdaq. “I always knew academia wasn’t going to be the right route for this,” he said, “Because if you really want to make a huge impact in the world, being stuck in a given lab is not the right way to do it." ( FOXBusiness) Austin was one of the lucky 20 to be selected for the programme and once he received his share, he immediately dropped out of Stanford, mid-degree, to found his start-up: Luminar Technologies. Cameras and other systems are great for assisted driving, but with autonomy, that's where need really high-performance lidar," he said, adding that Luminar is the only company able to provide this technology at production and for use at highway speeds.Then one day in 2012, the young entrepreneur won a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Fellowship - a programme funded by billionaire Peter Thiel (a co-founder of Paypal) - to nurture the outstanding tech talent of students. "I think 50 commercial partners and a majority of the major automakers we are working with would disagree. The world's newest billionaire, Russell, disagrees. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that lidar is not needed for autonomous driving to work.

We have the largest patent portfolio in sensing systems, more than the top five other lidar R&D efforts combined."Ĭompeting lidar technologies include firms such as Velodyne and Alphabet 's Waymo. "We've built out and pioneered core components. "We have one of the most insane moats of any company at this stage," Russell said. The Luminar CEO is not worried about lidar technology his firm has built become commoditized IP, saying the rise of this breakthrough technology is closer to what chip maker Nvidia does than a tech hardware company. Luminar, which made the 2018 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, began trading under the ticker symbol LAZR on the Nasdaq on Thursday, after its deal with SPAC Gores Metropoulos was completed. "It's cool to see back in 2017 they were acquired at a 43x revenue multiple of the business." While Russell said it can be hard for the market to value new technologies that lack existing market comps, he noted Luminar is working with Intel 's Mobileye, which also focused on the future of autonomous sensing systems. Luminar works with automakers including Volvo, which is owned by Chinese auto company Geely. Russell said the company has a forward looking book of auto business at $1.3 billion and estimates its overall market opportunity within the multi-trillion auto market at "half a trillion" as lidar and autonomous vehicles come into focus for the auto industry. He ended up at Stanford University studying physics, but dropped out and received a Thiel Fellowship, created by tech icon and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel to provide tech talent with alternatives to traditional education programs. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit
