What exciting thing did Austin Russell do at the age of 25 that made him very wealthy?

Austin Russell (born March 14, 1995) is an American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies. Luminar specializes in lidar and machine perception technologies, mainly used in autonomous cars. Luminar went public in December 2020, making him a billionaire at the age of 25.

Russell founded Luminar in 2012 while he was still in high school, shortly before turning 17. After graduating from high school, he attended Stanford University for three months, taking courses in applied physics. Russell won $100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship in 2013, leading him to drop out and focus on Luminar full-time.

The company spent its first five years in stealth mode. Rather than purchasing components, Russell engineered and manufactured Luminar's lidar components himself.

On December 3, 2020, Luminar went public, trading on the Nasdaq as LAZR. Russell's 104.7 million shares, roughly one-third of Luminar's equity, were worth $2.4 billion at the close of trading on December 3, making Russell the world's youngest self-made billionaire.