At 26, Austin Russell (No. 37) is getting an extremely early start on mega-philanthropy, even by the standards of tech entrepreneurs, who are known for making fortunes at a young age. His $70 million gift to the Central Florida Foundation, announced in late December, will nearly double the community foundation’s assets.
Russell, the founder of Luminar Technologies, which focuses on autonomous driving technology, became a billionaire in December 2020 when his company went public. Russell is working long days to help his company succeed, but his bold philanthropic gift is not a total surprise because a charitable gift helped launch Russell’s own career.
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Russell was an ambitious and frustrated 17-year-old freshman at Stanford University in 2012 when he learned about the Thiel Fellowship — Peter Thiel’s effort to spark innovation by giving young entrepreneurs $100,000 to drop out of college and network with Silicon Valley mentors.
The money and the experiences Russell received through the fellowship set the stage for Luminar’s success; Russell roomed with other ambitious teenagers who went on create the cryptocurrency Ethereum and the fast-growing Oyo hotel chain.
“The fellowship was incredibly inspirational and helpful,” Russell says. “When you’re getting started and have nothing to work with, $100,000 is everything. It’s amazing how much of an impact it can have.”
Russell observes the irony of his presence as the youngest donor on this year’s Philanthropy 50: On a list populated by people who tend to give to higher education, Russell became wealthy by dropping out of Stanford to focus on his business.
“College isn’t for everyone,” Russell says. “Some people are more geared toward wanting to build something.”
Concentrated Giving
In some respects, Central Florida is an improbable recipient of Russell’s philanthropy. He grew up in Newport Beach, Cal., an hour outside Los Angeles, and given his technology start-up and Stanford experience, he could easily have landed permanently in Silicon Valley.
Luminar does have a team that works in Silicon Valley, but Russell established the company’s headquarters in Orlando because the remote-sensing technology at the heart of Luminar’s work — known as lidar — is widely used by engineers in Florida’s defense and aerospace industries, including at Cape Canaveral.
Russell has now lived there for six years, but the gift to the Central Florida Foundation wasn’t merely an effort to give back locally; Russell and his team crunched numbers and determined that per capita philanthropic giving in Orlando lagged other cities.
On a list populated by people who tend to give to higher education, Austin Russell became wealthy by dropping out of Stanford to focus on his business.
“It’s been underinvested in proportion to larger metro areas — the New Yorks, San Franciscos, and L.A.s of this world,” Russell says. “In running the math behind it, we found there was disproportionately more for some for these larger areas and disproportionately less for a place like Orlando.”
The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 list reflects that finding: Florida has a larger population than New York and half as many people as California, but only $82 million in gifts went to Florida nonprofits (primarily Russell’s gift), compared with $3.3 billion to California organizations and $2.1 billion to New York charities.
Russell says he didn’t even consider setting up a private foundation after learning about the Central Florida Foundation’s track record using data to make progress against problems in its seven-county region.
“These guys are fantastic,” Russell says. “Why set up something new when you can already leverage great people and teams that are out there today?”
All About the Data
Russell’s $70 million gift to the Central Florida Foundation will nearly match the $80 million in assets that the foundation already owns. It also advises on another $20 million owned by local cities, counties, and private foundations.
Mark Brewer, the foundation’s president and CEO, says the gift is all the sweeter because the foundation has at times struggled to connect with young entrepreneurs who, like Russell, are spending long hours building their companies. “To be as young as he is and have that pathway in front of him and have philanthropy be as important a value as business, that’s an impressive thing,” Brewer says.
Brewer says the foundation has been using collective-impact approaches for at least a decade to coordinate with local nonprofit partners and make progress on issues like affordable housing, high-school graduation rates, and work-force readiness.
“We get as much data as we can around an issue to get to the source of the problem, find 10 places in the country that are doing it better, and then look to bring their models in,” Brewer says. “That’s part of what attracted Austin to the foundation — he’s a systemic thinker.”
Russell also sees an opportunity to have a positive impact on humanity through his business, which aims to improve on existing autonomous driving technology. “We laid out a 100-year plan,” he says. “We have the opportunity to save 100 million lives and a 100 trillion hours.”
But he continues to look for areas where his giving can help. On January 1, just days after the Central Florida Foundation gift was announced, Russell made a last-minute $4 million gift to the #TeamSeas fundraising campaign to help it meets its goal of raising $30 million to clean trash from the oceans. The two-month campaign, which would have fallen short without Russell’s donation, was started by two prominent YouTube personalities who partnered with the charities Ocean Conservancy and Ocean Cleanup.
“I’m a huge believer in the overall cause,” Russell says.
Now he plans to get back to work and grow Luminar in a way that will eventually allow even bigger gifts.
“The goal is that whatever amount I’m donating today will hopefully have the opportunity to be 10 times or 100 times in the future,” Russell says.
