Executive Team

Austin Russell is an inventor, business leader, and automotive safety pioneer as the Founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies, a leader in automotive LiDAR hardware and software technology. Under Austin’s leadership, Luminar has developed state of the art LiDAR and software technology capable of enabling next-generation safety and autonomous capabilities for global production vehicles. Luminar has amassed over 50 commercial partners, including the majority of the world’s largest automakers. The company went public on the NASDAQ in 2020. Austin has set a 100-year vision for Luminar - to save as many as 100 million lives and 100 trillion hours on the road over the next century.

Austin founded Luminar in 2012 at age 17, after previously working on various photonics and optoelectronics projects, architecting a new kind of LiDAR to enable safe autonomous functionality on cars, trucks, and robotaxis. Now 29, Austin has been recognized by Forbes as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Austin was also a recipient of the Thiel Fellowship, one of MIT Tech Review Innovators Under 35, and Forbes 30 under 30 alumni. He is an active philanthropist, recognized in 2022 on the Philanthropy 50 as the 36th largest donor in America.

For the past 25 years, Tom led many of the automotive industry’s most significant and successful financial endeavors that have shaped the industry globally. Before joining Luminar, from 2014 to May 2020, Tom was the Global Head of Automotive and the Co-Head of the Industrials Group at Jefferies Group, LLC. For 17 years prior, he held various roles at Goldman Sachs, including Global Head of Automotive and Co-Head of Goldman’s Industrials Group based in Beijing, China. Over that time, Tom managed IPOs, financings, and M&As for Tesla, Mobileye, Sensata, GM, Fiat Chrysler, BYD, Beijing Auto, Guangzhou Auto, Ballard Power, Cobasys, Key Safety Systems, Takata, Tower Automotive, Delphi, TowerSec, Visteon and many others. In 2015, Tom was recognized as one of M&A Advisor’s 40 under 40.