He spent those years at the Beckman Laser Institute at the University of California, Irvine. He didn't go to a traditional high school.

He filed for his first patent at 13 for an underground water recycling system that reuses water from sprinkler's for future gardening, something that also reduces wastewater. At six, he took his Nintendo DS game console and turned it into a mobile phone. He memorized the periodic table of elements at two. Russell has been a prodigy nearly since birth.

Luminar's SEC filing projected sales of $15 million this year and believe the company will reach over $1 billion in sales by 2026. He recently got orders from Volvo, Daimler Truck AG, Chinese carmaker Geely, and Intel Corp's Mobileye. Russell has been selling major car makers prototypes for the past few years. The technology is similar to radar, but it uses lasers instead of radio waves. This technology, called 'lidar,' for light detection and ranging, is fundamental to self-driving cars. Russell's Luminar isn't in the business of making self-driving cars, it perfects sensors to help self-driving cars 'see' by bouncing a laser beam off objects in the car's path. Thiel has been an advisor to Russell since he dropped out of Stanford to start Luminar in 2012. Thiel's fellowship that Russell was a part of in 2012 offered young people with big ideas $100,000 to drop out of college to pursue their dreams. Investors in Luminar include Peter Thiel, who helped Russell get Luminar started when he made him a Thiel Fellow in 2012, Alec Gores of The Gores Group, Volvo Cars Tech Fund, and billionaire Dean Metropoulos, who is chairman of Luminar. Luminar has a market value of $3.4 billion. Russell holds 104.7 million shares of his company, roughly one third of all available shares. He's also one of the first billionaires to emerge from the self-driving car industry. This makes him the youngest self-made billionaire. Now 25, his net worth has soared to $2.4 billion, after his company went public on the Nasdaq recently. Austin Russell founded Luminar Technologies when he was 17. Move over, John Collison, there's a new youngest self-made billionaire in town.

Austin russell luminar net worth