Angus Pacala

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ouster

Last Reviewed: September 25, 2026

Executive Summary

Angus Pacala is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ouster, the San Francisco sensing company listed on Nasdaq as OUST. He co-founded the company in June 2015 and has run it and sat on its board ever since, a single-CEO run that now covers a SPAC listing in 2021, a 2023 merger of equals with Velodyne Lidar, and the February 2026 acquisition of StereoLabs. That last deal changed what Ouster sells. It had been a digital lidar company. It now sells lidar, cameras, compute and perception software together, pitched at what the company calls Physical AI. Ouster reported $55 million of revenue for the second quarter of 2026, up 56% on the year before. Pacala is a mechanical engineer by training. Before Ouster he ran engineering at Quanergy, another lidar company.

Career Highlights

• Co-founded Ouster in June 2015. He has been its Chief Executive Officer and a director since then, and was re-elected to the board at the June 2026 annual meeting.
• Took Ouster public on Nasdaq through its business combination with Colonnade Acquisition Corp., completed on 11 March 2021.
• Completed a merger of equals with Velodyne Lidar on 10 February 2023. The combined company kept the Ouster name.
• Closed the acquisition of the AI-vision company StereoLabs on 4 February 2026. StereoLabs had shipped more than 90,000 ZED cameras to over 10,000 customers.
• Reported record product revenue for the second quarter of 2026, its fourteenth straight quarter of growth, with more than 17,000 sensors shipped.
• Director of Engineering at Quanergy from November 2012 to February 2015.

Professional Journey

Pacala holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. His first industry role on record was as a battery engineer at Amprius, Inc., from June 2011 to October 2012.

In November 2012 he moved to Quanergy, where he was Director of Engineering until February 2015. Four months after leaving, in June 2015, he co-founded Ouster. He has been its chief executive from the start.

Ouster went public in March 2021 by merging with Colonnade Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company. Its biggest structural change came two years later. On 10 February 2023 Ouster completed a merger of equals with Velodyne Lidar, another listed lidar maker. Pacala stayed on as chief executive of the combined business.

In February 2026 Ouster bought StereoLabs SAS. StereoLabs was founded in 2010, makes the ZED line of stereo cameras and perception software, and had more than 10,000 customers. Its co-founders stayed on to run it. With the deal, Ouster moved from selling one sensor type to selling a combined lidar and camera platform. Pacala described that as positioning Ouster “as the foundational end-to-end sensing and perception platform for Physical AI.” The second-quarter 2026 release attributes product revenue growth mainly to industrial and smart infrastructure customers, in uses such as warehouse automation, yard logistics and intelligent transportation. In the second quarter of 2026 it reported $55 million in revenue, gross margin of 49% and about $263 million in cash and short-term investments.

He is also a director of Ouster. The roles of chair and chief executive are held separately there.

Education

Stanford University

Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering

Stanford University

Master of Science, Mechanical Engineering