The 29-year-old former ballerina surpasses tech founder and Taylor Swift to become a billionaire and AI entrepreneur Lucy Guo to become the world’s youngest self-made female millionaire. Following her company’s $11 billion valuation, Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of the prediction market platform Kalshi, had her net worth leap to $1.3 billion, according to Forbes. For nine months, Lopes Lara, a ballet student at Brazil’s Bolshoi Theater, gave professional performances in Austria.
However, she switched from dancing shoes to computer science and enrolled at MIT, where she met Tarek Manour, another student. They started Kalshi in 2018 with the intention of establishing a regulated marketplace for wagering on event outcomes after working as Wall Street interns. When users wagered more than $500 million on Donald Trump winning the presidential election in 2024, the site’s popularity skyrocketed. Since then, the business has risen past its primary rival, Polymarket, which is today valued at $9 billion.
She surpasses 31-year-old Guo, the creator of Scale AI, who has been the youngest female billionaire since June, according to the appraisal, surpassing 35-year-old Swift, whose net worth has increased due to the success of her record-breaking touring.
