Austin Russel, the 27-year-old billionaire and founder of Luminar Technologies, has been challenging Elon Musk with his self-driving startup for years.

Now, he just swept away Tesla’s company lawyer too.

The youngest self-made billionaire onboarded ex-Tesla lawyer Alan Prescott as Luminar’s new chief legal officer, offering a hefty compensation package of almost $30 million dollars, according to Bloomberg.

Prescott not only received $29.5 million in stock awards but also $205,700 in cash and a $50,000 bonus, the company’s 10-K filing revealed.

Having previously worked on high-level positions at companies like Ford and Uber, Luminar says that Prescott’s pay package is fitting for his level of experience.

Prescott was also joined by two other lawyers, Katharine Martin and Alexander Phillips, who received compensation packages as high as $636,000 in 2021.

Although Tesla is also developing autonomous vehicles, the key difference between the two companies is in the technology they’re using.

Russel’s Luminar relies on LiDAR technology, short for light detection and ranging, to detect the car’s surrounding environment while Elon prefers using sensors and cameras for Tesla’s self-driving cars saying LiDAR is “freaking stupid ... expensive and unnecessary”, according to CNBC.

But it seems like Russel knows what he’s talking about.

Russel’s company is backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, and has had more than 50 commercial partners on his client roster including industry giants like Volvo, Toyota, and Intel.

At the beginning of 2022, Mercedes-Benz announced its partnership with Luminar for its upcoming line of luxury vehicles, acquiring up to 1.5 million Luminar shares as part of the deal.

Luminar’s continued successes and most recent buy-out of Tesla’s VP of Legal is showing a lot of promise for Austin Russel.