Austin Russell is a Stanford University graduate who became the world’s most eminent student youngest self-made billionaire in 2020 in age 25 years when his startup Luminar went public. Luminar creates sensor technology that helps cars navigate their surroundings; Volvo, ToyotaAND Mercedes-Benz Use sensors.
Russell, who is now 29, spoke out on the matter Masters of scale podcast with Will.i.am on Wednesday about how he struck it wealthy at a young age. Russell, whose father worked in real estate and mother did modeling and public speaking, says he was one hundred pc self-taught and created a lab in his parents’ garage when he was 10 or 11.
“[My parents] “I always joked that you let Austin do black magic in the garage and slide food under the door,” Russell said.
He said he at all times wanted to know how and why things worked, and he explored this curiosity from an early age.
Russell began focusing on optics and lasers in his home lab at age 13; then, at age 17, he worked at the Beckman Laser Institute at UC Irvine. He decided to pursue entrepreneurship slightly than a tenured professorship because he wanted to create innovations with immediate real-world impact.
Russell founded Luminar, where he is also CEO, at age 17 to build sensors that might make driving safer. He graduated from highschool, attended Stanford for a few months, then dropped out after receiving $100,000 Thiel Scholarship develop your idea for two years.
His goal for Luminar became more ambitious: to save as many as 100 million lives and 100 trillion hours over the next 100 years. April Report from reinsurance company Swiss Re shows that progress towards this goal is visible – Luminar software has reduced the severity of automobile accidents by as much as 40%.
“I think the ultimate way to leverage the potential and scale up has to be through some form of entrepreneurship and some kind of effort,” he said.
Luminar Founder Austin Russell. Photo: Taylor Hill/Getty Images
Russell said he has benefited from the wealth of knowledge available online, including lectures that were previously only available to postgraduate students. He once said he watched 4 years of lectures on the technical topics he needed to know “in less than a month.”
“You can do this,” he said. “Nothing can stop you.”
Russell’s net value is estimated at $1.6 billionalthough the Luminar share price has fallen by about 40% since the starting of the yr. Possible causes it could be a very competitive market and a small number of consumers who generate a good portion of the company’s revenue.
He’s also now not the world’s youngest self-made billionaire; he’s a 27-year-old MIT dropout who co-founded Scale AI Alexander Wang now holds the title.