Luana Lopes Lara is the youngest female billionaire
Brazilian entrepreneur Luana Lopes Lara, who co-founded prediction market platform, Kalshi, has earned the latest title of the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire according to a Forbes report.
Lara, 29, has surpassed 31-year-old Scale AI cofounder Lucy Guo, who took the title from Taylor Swift in April 2025.
Lara, who started a fintech company six years ago, has her company valued at $11 billion after a $1 billion fundraise, making both its founders billionaires and Luana Lopes Lara the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire.
Kalshi’s valuation has soared more than fivefold in less than six months, boosting the net worths of the young cofounders, who each own an estimated 12% of the company, to $1.3 billion each.
Born in Brazil, Lara spent her teenage years as a ballerina at the Bolshoi Theater School, where she trained for up to 10 hours a day.
She pursued a career in dance for months in Austria after finishing high school, but then changed tack to academics.
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The ballerina earned degrees in computer science and math from MIT, including a master’s in engineering with research in cognitive science.
After her education, she entered the quantitative finance space, interning at top firms like Citadel Securities and Bridgewater Associates, and in 2018, she launched Kalshi with fellow MIT grad Mansour.
The platform lets users trade on real-world events, from economic reports to elections, turning uncertainty into an investable asset class.
According to Forbes, the platform experienced high trading volumes during the 2024 US election, hitting billions.
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