The 22-Year-Old at the Center of the Self-Driving Car Craze
- Austin Russell raises millions of dollars for lidar startup
- Luminar Technologies CEO counts Peter Thiel among backers
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In the sixth grade, Austin Russell turned a Nintendo gaming handset into a cell phone. At 15, he built a holographic keyboard. By 17, he’d filed for a patent. Now at 22, he’s running a startup at the heart of Silicon Valley’s latest technology mania.
As founder and chief executive officer of Luminar Technologies Inc., Russell and his team are building lidar, a hyper-accurate laser sensing technology crucial for self-driving cars. Google parent Alphabet Inc. is suing Uber Technologies Inc. for allegedly stealing lidar designs, while startups Velodyne Lidar Inc. and Quanergy Systems Inc. have raised at least $150 million apiece from giants like Ford Motor Co., Baidu Inc., Daimler AG and Samsung Electronics Co.