# Austin Russell: person

Canonical ID: `46dddf30-d208-42fe-890b-2cfe40d06064`

Founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies (founded 2012), which he started at age 17 while a physics student at Stanford. Received a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship in 2013 and left Stanford to build Luminar full-time. Luminar went public via SPAC (Gores Metropoulos) in December 2020; Russell was recognized as the youngest self-made billionaire at the time. Luminar builds 1550nm InGaAs lidar sensors (the Iris platform) for automotive ADAS and autonomy.

- **Nationality:** American
- **Verification posture:** reported

## Current roles (1)

- [Luminar Technologies](https://registry.deploy.report/companies/luminar.md) Founder & CEO (secondary-verified)

## Foundings (1)

- [Luminar Technologies](https://registry.deploy.report/companies/luminar.md) founded 2012-01-01 (sole)

## Sources (1)

1. https://investors.luminartech.com/corporate-governance/board-of-directors


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