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Luminar CEO Austin Russell gestures while looking at a 3D lidar map.
Photo AP / Ben Margot
Manufacturer of autonomous cars Luminar Technologies LAZR LAZR,
went public on Thursday through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), making founder Austin Russell a billionaire at the age of 25.
Russell joins a short list of people who amassed a billion dollar fortune before the age of 30. He founded Luminar in 2012 as a teenager, leaving Stanford University to focus on his business.
“It’s been incredibly intense, grueling… everything we’ve had to go through each day, increasing it. And of course, it’s incredibly rewarding to have the opportunity to be able to get out now and enter public markets and grow through this PSPC IPO, ”Russell said in a recent post. interview with Forbes. “I’m still relatively young, but… there has been a lot of blood, sweat and tears. And I was lucky to be able to keep a good enough participation.
PSPCs are essentially blank check companies that raise funds through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) to complete an acquisition.
Russell dropped out of school after receiving a $ 100,000 scholarship offer from PayPal PYPL,
founder Peter Thiel to start his business. The Thiel scholarship “gives $ 100,000 to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom,” according to its website.
Russell owns 104.7 million shares of Luminar according to the proxy circular filed with the SEC, which would be worth more than $ 3 billion as of Friday afternoon’s session.
California-based Luminar is developing lidar technology – using lasers to measure distances – for autonomous driving. Other companies in the EV space like Tesla TSLA,
and Nissan NSANY,
have chosen to use radar and GPS technology rather than lidar.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk criticized the use of laser technology for autonomous driving, saying “lidar is a dumb race, and anyone who trusts lidar is doomed.”
Shares of Luminar Technologies Inc. rose nearly 40% on Friday, doubling in the first two days since the stock began trading on the Nasdaq COMP,
under the symbol LAZR.
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