Photo Credit Daily Mail and BossHunting.com
1601 San Onofre Dr, Pacific Palisades was featured on the Show Succession.
(Zillow Link)
It is valued at over $80M and the property tax alone is over $1M per year.
Tragically it burned down this week. But the spotlight got me wondering who owns this cruise ship of a home?
According to Daily Mail, the owner is Austin Russell, 29, CEO and founder of Luminar Technologies, Inc. ($LAZR). (Story link)
Luminar page on Perplexity Finance
https://www.perplexity.ai/finance/LAZR
(Update Oct 4, 2025)
Stock is down 75 to 64% since the time I published this article.
The stock has gone from $500 in December 2020 to $7.40 USD today, that is a 98% loss. You would need exactly 6,556.76% increase gain to breakeven!
LAZR went IPO via a SPAC merger in Dec 2020. Here is where things don’t add up. He is not the son of Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon or Elon Musk. So he is a self made billionaire. Fine. His salary is $750k annually, which doesn’t even cover the taxes. How does someone who make only $750k have the cash or down payment for a $100m house?
Then you look at the company performance. LAZR loses a lot of money.
If anyone wants to dig deeper feel free to dig and make comments.
Conclusion
The stock market should not be used like this.
Go IPO when you have no business to ipo
enrich Wall St with fees
Lose a lot of money
enrich the founders
pay crazy salaries to a money loser company
mom and pop stock buyer becomes the bag holder
rinse and repeat
In order to access capital markets companies like LAZR which loses money and prob gets a ton of government green energy funds, executives should be paid a max living wage of $100-200k salary and be tied to long term stock performance.
So in my Wall St, these type of CEOs would be living a modest life driving a Prius working 100 hour weeks for the privilege of accessing the capital markets and for a chance to make it big along with their public shareholders. Not trying to buy Forbes Inc.
If Austin inherited all the money from being a secret Rothchild heir or has 1M bitcoins, I sincerely apologize. I suspect there is much much more to this story.
And I want to reaffirm I am not trying to be insensitive to the victims of the fires, including Austin. But this story simply peaked my curiosity in the house and it’s history. And it immediately was evident Wall St enabled this largesse. I wonder if any common stock bag holder was ever allowed to sleep over at 1601.
Great post. Thank you.
Dot com 2.0. ☹️