22 Facts About Gene Haas

Gene Francis Haas was born on November 12,1952 and is the American founder, president, and sole stockholder of Haas Automation, a CNC machine tool manufacturer.

Gene Haas has founded the NASCAR teams Haas CNC Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing and Haas Factory Team, as well as the Formula One team, Haas F1 Team.

Gene Haas originally majored in engineering but switched to business after Lockheed nearly went bankrupt.

In 1980, Gene Haas noticed that it took one of his employees a long time to manually position an indexer.

Gene Haas thought that building his own indexer with a stepper motor drive would be more efficient.

Gene Haas built one for himself and a few more for other machine shops.

In 1988, Gene Haas started production on a fully enclosed CNC machine priced well below the competition.

Gene Haas Automation is the largest machine tool manufacturer in the United States.

In 2002, Gene Haas formed a NASCAR race team, Gene Haas CNC Racing.

Gene Haas was present at the first team win in May 2009 when Stewart won the All-Star Race.

Gene Haas joined Stewart on the podium at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 20,2011, as Stewart won the Ford EcoBoost 400 that day and claimed his third Sprint Cup Championship.

Stewart-Gene Haas won their second Cup title with Kevin Harvick in 2014.

Gene Haas opened Gene Haas Factory Team, solely owned by him in 2025.

On May 28 it was revealed that the team would delay its debut until 2016, with Gene Haas officially confirming the postponement on June 4.

In December 2014, it was further reported that Gene Haas purchased major assets from the bankrupted Marussia F1 team, which was confirmed in early 2015.

Gene Haas has been a donor to two-year colleges, most recently Danville Community College through the award of a $1 million grant in April 2015 to support an Associate of Applied Science degree program in Integrated Machining Technology.

The Gene Haas Foundation was founded in 1999 to provide grants to Ventura County community charities as the Boys and Girls Clubs, Food Share, Rescue Mission, and others.

In 2022, the Gene Haas Foundation provided more than $27 million in grants, bringing the total donations of the foundation since its foundation to more than $175 million.

On June 19,2006, Gene Haas was arrested by IRS agents on suspicion of filing false tax returns, witness intimidation, and conspiracy.

Just before Gene Haas's case was to go to trial, a plea agreement was reached, whereby he would plead guilty to felony conspiracy to commit tax evasion.

Gene Haas was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $75 million in restitution.

Gene Haas was incarcerated beginning January 2008 and was released on probation on May 7,2009, after serving 16 months of his two-year sentence.