- Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara (29) has succeeded Scale AIโs Lucy Guo (31) and Taylor Swift (35) as the youngest self-made female billionaire.
- The former professional ballerina turned MIT computer science graduate has seen her financial exchange and prediction market platformโs valuation snowball this past year.
- Kalshi recently raised US$1 billion to achieve an US$11 billion valuation.
As strange as it may sound, Luana Lopes Laraโs past life as a ballerina โ which apparently entailed everything from instructors holding lit cigarettes under her extended leg to fellow dancers hiding glass shards in each otherโs shoes to get ahead (as per Forbes) โ paved the way for her crowning as the youngest self-made female billionaire.
At least thatโs what we imagine, given that in roughly a decade, the 29-year-old entrepreneur has successfully pirouetted away from the cutthroat world of professional dancing, into the cutthroat world of venture capitalism and tech startups.
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This isnโt a story about serendipity or luck. Itโs about grit you canโt just learn, a lifelong dream to become the next Steve Jobs โ partially inspired by her math teacher mother and electrical engineer father โ as well as a tireless dedication to academics that led her to graduate with a computer science degree from MIT (not to mention the college summers she spent interning for Ray Dalioโs Bridgewater and Ken Griffinโs Citadel).
In a matter of six years, Luana Lopes Lara and co-founder Tarek Mansour have turned an idea to establish a prediction market firm โ one that allows users to gamble on the outcome of future events a la Polymarket โ into the fully-fledged behemoth that is Kalshi, whose numbers have been no less impressive to witness skyrocket in real time.
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During the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election, Kalshi users bet upwards of US$500 million on candidates, and correctly predicted Donald Trumpโs victory a month prior to an official result (similar to his relationship with Polymarket, Donald Trump Jr has since joined Kalshiโs advisory board). The platform claims that weekly trading volume alone has now surpassed US$1 billion โ some 90% driven by sports contracts.
The companyโs valuation, on the other hand, has increased by more than fivefold in under six months: US$2 billion after raising US$185 million back in June, US$5 billion after raising $300 million this past October; and in the wake of the latest billion-dollar raise led by crypto-centric VC Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, along with several others, Kalshi currently sits at approximately US$11 billion.
Considering Luana Lopes Lara and Tarek Mansourโs slice of this pie is an estimated 12% apiece, that translates to an extremely healthy net worth of US$1.32 billion each. Lopes Lara succeeds Scale AIโs Lucy Guo, and before that, Taylor Swift.
Check out Forbesโ recent feature story about the rise of Luana Lopes Lara and Kalshi here.
