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An ex-Tesla lawyer received nearly $30 million to ditch Elon Musk's company for a 27-year-old billionaire's self-driving startup

Grace Kay   

An ex-Tesla lawyer received nearly $30 million to ditch Elon Musk's company for a 27-year-old billionaire's self-driving startup
LifeThelife2 min read
  • Luminar Technologies offered Alan Prescott nearly $30 million to leave Tesla, a SEC filing revealed.
  • The new chief legal officer at the LIDAR startup has over $29.5 million in stock awards for Luminar.

Luminar Technologies gave former Tesla lawyer Alan Prescott a compensation package worth nearly $30 million to become the company's new chief legal officer last year.

Prescott left Tesla last year to join the startup that develops laser sensors for self-driving cars. The lawyer's compensation package was revealed in the company's 10-K filing that was submitted in March to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and was first reported by Bloomberg.

Prescott has over $29.5 million in stock awards for Luminar, according to the filing. Last year, the company paid him about $205,700 in cash, and his salary was later raised to $300,000, with a $50,000 bonus in November, the company's quarterly report shows.

A spokesperson from Luminar did not respond to a request for comment from Insider.

Prescott currently owns over $21.5 million in Luminar stock, per Bloomberg's data. A source familiar with the issue told Bloomberg that Prescott's compensation package is similar to the one he had at Tesla.

The former Vice President of Legal at Tesla is a veteran in the automotive industry and has worked on several projects involving autonomous vehicles. Before his stint at Tesla, he spent a decade at Ford and later served as senior counsel for Uber's autonomous-driving unit.

Luminar is an up-and-coming company in the self-driving world. In January, Mercedes-Benz announced it was partnering with the startup and planned to use its self-driving technology for its next lineup of luxury vehicles.

The LIDAR company listed on the Nasdaq stock market via a reverse merger in 2020 and made its 27-year-old CEO, Austin Russell, a billionaire virtually overnight. Last year, Forbes crowned Russell as its youngest self-made billionaire.

Prescott's decision to move to Luminar might appear counterintuitive to some, as it goes against Tesla CEO Elon Musk's philosophies about self-driving tech. In 2019, Musk described Luminar's technology, used by most other self-driving-car firms, as "doomed."

Instead of LIDAR, Tesla relies on a suite of external cameras and other sensors for its autonomous-driving efforts. In October, The New York Times reported that Musk has repeatedly instructed the company's Autopilot team, which works on self-driving car tech, to ditch radar and use only cameras instead, as it most closely emulates the human eye.

Prescott is not the only lawyer to join Luminar over the past year. The company's 10-K filing revealed that the company has hired two more lawyers to join the startup's board and offered the lawyers, Katharine Martin and Alexander Phillips, compensation packages as high as $636,000 in 2021.

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