A new name has made history in the business world. Luana Lopes Lara is now the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire. She is only 29 years old. This news comes from a recent report by Forbes magazine. She has taken the title from Lucy Guo, the cofounder of Scale AI. Lucy Guo recently passed singer Taylor Swift for the spot. Lara’s rise to the top has been incredibly fast.
Who is Luana Lopes Lara?
Her wealth comes from her company, a startup named Kalshi. She built the company with her business partner, Tarek Mansour. They both graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Kalshi recently raised a huge amount of money. The company secured $1 billion in a new funding round. This round was led by Paradigm, a venture capital firm focused on crypto. Other major investors also joined. They include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Y Combinator.
This new funding gives Kalshi a massive valuation. The company is now worth an estimated $11 billion. This is a huge jump from earlier this year. In June, the company was valued at $2 billion. By October, that number grew to $5 billion. Now, it has more than doubled again. The company’s growth has been meteoric.
So, what exactly is Kalshi? It is a prediction-market platform. It was launched just six years ago. The platform lets users make bets on future events. People can bet on politics, like election results. They can bet on economic trends, sports outcomes, and pop culture. It turns predictions into a tradable market.
Tarek Mansour explained their mission in a past interview. He told Forbes they are creating a whole new asset class. He said they are building a completely new financial product. A major key to their success was getting regulatory approval. The company is regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Getting that approval was not easy. The founders said nearly 65 different lawyers rejected their idea first. The company spent almost three years working through regulatory concerns. They finally got approval in late 2020 and launched the platform.
The hard work paid off quickly. By August 2021, the platform had over 4,000 users. By December of that same year, it reached $10 million in trading volume. Their early focus on regulations helped them get seed funding. One of their first major investors was financial giant Charles Schwab.
Who is the woman behind this huge success? Luana Lopes Lara’s story is unique. She was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her first career was not in finance or tech. She was a ballet prodigy. She studied at the famous Bolshoi Theatre School in Brazil. Getting into that school is very hard. For every one spot, there are about 97 applicants.
The training was intense. Students practice ballet for eight hours every weekday. This goes on for eight years. Lara became a professional ballerina. She worked in Austria for a time. Then, she decided to shift her focus to academics.
She enrolled at MIT to study computer science and mathematics. While there, she did research in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. Her summers were spent at top finance firms. She worked at Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates. She also worked at Ken Griffin’s Citadel. After graduating, she worked at Citadel Securities and Five Rings Capital. These jobs helped build her knowledge of trading and financial markets.
Luana Lopes Lara Net Worth 2025
So, what is Luana Lopes Lara’s net worth? Forbes estimates she owns about a 12% stake in Kalshi. Her business partner, Tarek Mansour, also owns about 12%. With the company now valued at $11 billion, each of their stakes is worth about $1.3 billion. This officially makes Lara a billionaire. She is the youngest self-made woman to ever achieve this status.
