Archive for Autonomy

Dear Billionaire Club, Make Room for the Youth

Luminar Technologies is a buzzing new company that offers technology assisting development of self-driving cars. Austin Russell is the founder and CEO of Luminar, but is a surprisingly young age- just 25! Though still very young, Austin Russell is now a member of the exclusive billionaires club. He holds over 100 million shares of Luminar worth about $2.4 billion. Austin Russell set on on his dream to further the development of autonomous vehicle technology when he received a $100,000 scholarship from Peter Theil to drop out of his college, Stanford. His company which creates a safer driving experience by utilizing laser beams to measure distances around the cars has secured Volvo Cars and others as customers. It is estimated that Luminar will generate $1.3 in sales per year by 2026. Though so young, Austin Russell admits it was not an easy journey, but explains that he persevered.

“It has been incredibly intense, exhausting… Everything that we have had to go through every day, climbing this.”

“I am still relatively young, but… there has been a lot of blood, sweat and tears in this. And I was lucky to be able to keep a good enough turnout ”

Austin Russell is a unique entrepreneur because he is one of very few people to become a billionaire before the age of 30. He got there by sheer determination and drive of changing the world of self-driving cars. These are very entrepreneurial traits. I am extremely inspired by Austin Russell, not only because I aspire to be a billionaire, but I also find it very exemplary how driven he is. Despite being exhausted and burnt out, Austin kept pushing to realize his goals

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/361130

 

Luminar – See the World Differently

 

Imagine being 16 and studying at the Beckman Laser Institute at the University of California, Irvine. Now imagine starting a business that has the potential to change how the transportation industry works forever. Both these events happened to Austin Russell in the same year. Austin Russell, now 22, is the founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies, a company that blew the doors off the automotive and autonomy industries. Luminar has developed a laser sensor technology that, compared to current-day LiDAR sensors, has 10x the range and 50x the resolution. These improvements are brought on by the increased rate at which the lasers of the Luminar sensor seek and receive data about their environment.

To this point, Luminar has raised more than $36 million and employs over 250 people. Russell says that he wants this product to have a real impact on the world, not just be some app someone downloads onto their phone. Russell says that this impact he is aiming for is to innovate on how people move, and to help eliminate one of the leading causes of death in the world.