Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
29 year old founder of an online betting platform Correctly predicted Donald Trump’s election victory last year She is now the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.
Brazilian former ballerina and hedge fund intern Luana Lopes Lara passed the milestone on Tuesday after reportedly experiencing rapid growth. ‘Prediction Market’ The firm Kalshi was valued by investors at about $11 billion.
according to forbesThe company recently closed a $1 billion investment round led by venture capital giants Sequoia Capital and Andreessen HorowitzLópez Lara’s shares became worth $1.3 billion – at least on paper.
In doing so, she moved from her seat 31-year-old AI entrepreneur Lucy Guo Guo became the youngest female billionaire after surpassing Taylor Swift in April.
Alex Immerman, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, explains, “There is little better training than becoming a professional ballerina to say ‘no’ and move on – an injury or a short rest could mean losing your spot.” forbes,
“Luana learned perseverance mixed with grace early on…and she brought that same quiet confidence to the creation of Kalshi.”
Swift, now 35, is reportedly set to reach that point in October 2023 at the age of 33, having made her famous debut Re-recording her early albums to regain the rights from her old label,
Guo, meanwhile, founded Scale AI in 2016 and left in 2018 over disagreements with his co-founder, but retained a stake in the company — which got a huge boost when Facebook’s parent group Meta buys 49 percent stake in June 2025,
Calculating the net worth of celebrities is vague and sometimes imprecise, one reason being the secrecy surrounding their assets. In 2019, forbes awarded the title of Then-21-year-old cosmetics mogul and Kardashian descendant Kylie Jenneronly to cancel it next year After accusing him of lying about his fate (which Jenner rejected,
In Lopes Lara’s case, both he and his co-founder, Tarek Mansour (also 29), are estimated to own about 12 percent of Kalshi’s shares. As the company has grown, investors have paid more and more for those shares, so that each of Laura and Mansour’s stakes are now worth a reported $1.3 billion.
Lopes Lara attended the prestigious Bolshoi Theater School in Joinville, Brazil, where the daily schedule ran from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and teachers would reportedly hold a burning cigarette under her thigh while she tried to keep it up for as long as possible.
After performing as a ballerina for nine months in Austria, she left to study computer science at MIT, where she met Mansour. While a student, she interned at New York City financial firms such as Citadel Securities (which played a major role in the GameStop stock frenzy in 2021),
“We’ve seen that most business happens when people have some idea about the future and then try to find a way to bring it to market,” Lopes Lara said. forbes,
This was the spark for Kalshi, which lets users bet against each other on whether certain events will occur in the future. US regulators consider it a financial trading platform rather than a gambling platform, which allows it to operate in states that ban online betting.
In 2019, the idea landed Lopes Lara and Mansour a place at Silicon Valley start-up accelerator Y Combinator, but it took years to get the necessary regulatory approvals and actually launch a product.
The company eventually sued the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for the right to operate, ultimately winning its case and going live in September 2024 – just in time for the presidential election.
Kalshi users bet approximately $3.6 billion on that contest and collectively called it right. The company now says more than $1 billion is traded on its service every week.