- 3 hours ago (Updated 3 hours ago)
- Alexandre godard
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Simply put, you could call him Elon Musk’s “little brother”. Austin Russell is a 25-year-old billionaire who we hear very little about in France but who nevertheless plays a very important role in the automotive sector. He and his company Luminar are the creators of a sensor essential for the proper functioning of future 100% autonomous cars.
Austin Russel: billionaire at 25
In any field, there are always people we talk about all the time and others who are more discreet. In the case of electric and autonomous cars for example, Elon Musk takes 95% of the media, but have you ever been interested in 5% remaining and more particularly to Austin Russell. This name may not mean anything to you and yet, this 25 year old american is the youngest billionaire in the world thanks to his company Luminar listed on the stock exchange and included in the American index NASDAQ. Luminar is a company that works on technologies and more particularly technology lidar which must be present in order for the autonomous driving system in a vehicle to be viable. The Lidar is the new sensor for the iPhone 12 Pro for example …
While he was already memorizing Mendeleev’s periodic table of chemical elements at two years old, it was at the age of 17 years that he creates his company after having gone through Stanford University and to have received a scholarship from the co-founder of PayPal, just that. He started by working on lasers of all kinds before focusing on lidar, which precisely uses lasers that create a 3D map of the environment to allow the autonomous car to find its bearings while driving. Luminar works with several large companies in the automotive sector including Volvo with whom he just signed an agreement.
This little wonder of science said:
I was just obsessed with learning certain things … just independent learning and understanding many new types of science fields, among others.
During an interview with CNBC, he explained that he wanted to be present in the long term:
It’s totally surreal and it makes perfect sense and it’s hard to explain the dichotomy of this one, but that’s always been the goal. We created the company to become a long-term sustainable business and propel the future of autonomy for all of these car manufacturers.
Finally, he explained publicly that his company had a portfolio of 1.3 billion dollars, a lot of leeway, which will surely allow Austin Russell and his teams to last over time.
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