Luana Lopes Lara, cofounder of the Kalshi prediction market, has become the world's youngest self-made female billionaire at age 29. Lopes Lara, who owns 12% of the startup now valued at $11 billion, takes the title from Scale AI cofounder Lucy Guo, 31, who overtook Taylor Swift this past April, Forbes reports. The Brazil native, a former professional ballerina and MIT computer science graduate, joined with her MIT classmate and fellow Five Rings Capital intern Tarek Mansour, also 29, to create Kalshi, a platform that lets users bet on the outcomes of everything from elections to sports and pop culture events.
Founded in 2019, Kalshi just completed a $1 billion funding round, announced Tuesday, pushing its valuation to $11 billion. That puts Lopes Lara's net worth at $1.3 billion, according to Forbes. Kalshi's valuation has jumped more than fivefold in less than six months, up from $2 billion in June. Notional trading volume has climbed eightfold, reaching $5.8 billion in November.
The company has faced its share of regulatory hurdles, including a legal battle with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over election contracts, but emerged with a historic edge and the first regulated election contracts in the US in more than 100 years. Despite ongoing scrutiny from state regulators, Kalshi continues to expand, now integrating with major brokerages and striking new partnerships across sports, crypto, and retail. It recently signed deals with the National Hockey League and CNN, per Forbes and the New York Post.
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