Haas graduated from California State University, Northridge in 1975 with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting and finance. He had originally majored in engineering but switched to business after Lockheed nearly went bankrupt. His summer machine-shop jobs paid the same as the work he found after graduation, so he kept working as a machinist and CNC programmer, and in 1978 hired two people to work with him in his small machine shop, which he named Pro-turn Engineering.
In 1980, Haas noticed that it took one of his employees a long time to manually position an indexer, and thought that building his own indexer with a stepper-motor drive would be more efficient. He built one for himself and a few more for other machine shops. In March 1983 he displayed his indexer at WESTEC, an industry expo, and after seeing the positive reaction of attendees he decided to form Haas Automation to mass-produce them. His first commercial product, the HBI-5C (Haas Brothers Indexer), sold well because it was programmable and inexpensive. In 1986, Haas and a partner were awarded a US patent for their invention. In 1988, Haas started production on a fully enclosed CNC machine priced well below the competition.
By 1996, Haas had outgrown its facilities in Chatsworth, California, and began a search that brought it to Oxnard, California; the move into the 420,000-square-foot Oxnard factory was completed in March 1997, and by 2005 the factory had been expanded to 1,000,000 square feet. Haas Automation is now the largest machine tool manufacturer in the United States, with sales for 2014 reaching a record reportedly exceeding $1 billion worldwide.
In 2002, Haas formed a NASCAR race team, Haas CNC Racing. After purchasing the Concord, North Carolina–based Craftsman Truck race facility from Hendrick Motorsports, the team began work on its first entry in the Winston Cup (now the NASCAR Cup Series) as a single-car team. The first entry was on September 30, 2002, with driver Jack Sprague, who finished 35th after a crash; the team raced only three times in 2002. By 2003 it was running full-time with several driver changes, and won its first race in the then-Busch Series in 2004 with driver Jason Leffler. By 2006 the team had relocated to a new facility in Kannapolis, North Carolina, and was fielding a full-time two-car team in the Cup Series, but at the end of 2008 it was still struggling with a career-average finish of just under 27th place.
Late in 2008, Haas announced that he would join forces with driver Tony Stewart, who would drive for the team and in return be given a 50% stake in the company. Stewart led the points for much of 2009, winning four times at Pocono, Daytona, Watkins Glen, and Kansas, and finished sixth in points. After a mediocre 2010 with wins at Atlanta and Fontana (and Ryan Newman winning at Phoenix), Stewart won the 2011 Sprint Cup Championship, taking 5 of the 10 Chase races. Haas was present at the team's first win in May 2009 when Stewart won the All-Star Race, and joined Stewart on the podium at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 20, 2011, as Stewart won the Ford EcoBoost 400 and claimed his third Sprint Cup Championship. Stewart-Haas won its second Cup title with Kevin Harvick in 2014. On September 30, 2015, Stewart announced his retirement from the Cup Series as a driver following the 2016 season. The team closed after the 2024 season, and Haas opened Haas Factory Team, solely owned by him, in 2025.
With Cole Custer's victory in the Truck Series event at New Hampshire in September 2014, Haas joined a select club of owners who have won as an owner in all three national touring series, alongside Rick Hendrick, Richard Childress, Jack Roush, Bill Davis and Dale Earnhardt.
In January 2014, Haas confirmed that he had formally submitted to the FIA his interest in entering a team in the F1 championship in 2015 or 2016, initially named Haas Formula and Haas Racing Developments. On April 11, 2014, Haas announced that he had been granted a license from the FIA. On May 28 it was revealed that the team would delay its debut until 2016, with Haas officially confirming the postponement on June 4. In September 2014 the team took up the name Haas F1 Team to better promote its involvement in the sport. In December 2014 it was further reported that Haas had purchased major assets from the bankrupted Marussia F1 team, confirmed in early 2015.
In 2006, planning began for a commercial wind tunnel, with Haas commissioning California-based Triliad Development to oversee the project; it was designed to be the most advanced automotive wind tunnel in the world. The facility is centered on an MTS rolling road that restrains a car directly on top of a massive treadmill-like machine with a 70-foot-long by 10-foot-wide, 1 mm thick stainless-steel belt rotating at speeds up to 180 miles per hour, accurately simulating the dynamics of a car on the race track, unlike traditional fixed-floor tunnels. Construction began in 2007 and was completed by year-end, and after six months of commissioning the wind tunnel opened to its first customer, a Formula One race team, in July 2008. The Wind Shear facility counts numerous NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula One and American Le Mans Series teams as customers and is owned 100% by Haas.
Haas Automation and Haas were recipients of the Roy Pinkerton Award, presented by United Way, Ventura County Chapter. Many engineering colleges have "CNC Labs" outfitted with machines he donated, including California Polytechnic State University, California State University Channel Islands, California State University Northridge, and De Anza College. Haas has also been a donor to two-year colleges, most recently Danville Community College through a $1 million grant in April 2015 to support an Associate of Applied Science degree program in Integrated Machining Technology, housed in the Gene Haas Center for Integrated Machining in Danville, Virginia.
The Gene Haas Foundation was founded in 1999 to provide grants to Ventura County community charities such as the Boys and Girls Clubs, Food Share, and Rescue Mission. The Foundation later expanded its mission to helping create more skilled manufacturing employees through training and educational programs, providing scholarship grants, sponsoring individual and team competitions that use CNC manufacturing technologies (such as extensive sponsoring of FIRST Robotics Competition teams), and supporting CNC training programs. In 2022, the Gene Haas Foundation provided more than $27 million in grants, bringing total donations since its founding to more than $175 million.
On June 19, 2006, Haas was arrested by IRS agents on suspicion of filing false tax returns, witness intimidation, and conspiracy. Four others were indicted together with Haas, all of whom pleaded guilty. Just before 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; he was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $75 million in restitution. Haas was incarcerated beginning January 2008 and was released on probation on May 7, 2009, after serving 16 months of his two-year sentence.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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