Luana Lopes Lara Becomes World’s Youngest Self-Made Woman Billionaire; Know Age, Net Worth

At just 29 years old, Brazilian entrepreneur Luana Lopes Lara has etched her name in history as the world's youngest self-made female billionaire. The driving force behind Kalshi, a cutting-edge prediction market platform, Lara's wealth skyrocketed after the company achieved an 11 billion dollars valuation. Her rapid ascent in the business world outpaces other tech leaders, including Lucy Guo of Scale AI, who briefly surpassed pop star Taylor Swift’s ranking, according to Forbes.

Who Is Luana Lopes Lara? Know Age, Net Worth

Lopes Lara was born in Brazil, where she trained as a professional ballerina at the esteemed Bolshoi Theatre School. She often describes this experience as even more intense than her time at MIT. After completing her high school education, she performed ballet professionally in Austria. A gifted student, Luana was deeply influenced by her parents, her mother, a mathematics teacher, and her father, an electrical engineer. She excelled academically, earning gold and bronze medals in national and regional science and math Olympiads across Brazil.

In pursuit of higher education, Lopes Lara moved to the United States, where she earned degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While at MIT, she interned with leading financial firms, including Bridgewater Associates, Citadel, and Five Rings Capital, where she gained significant experience in quantitative trading.

Kalshi's Founding & Road To Billionaire

The idea for Kalshi was born during Lopes Lara’s time in New York City in 2018, where she and her MIT classmate and co-founder, Tarek Mansour, recognised a gap in the market. They saw an opportunity to create a platform that allowed people to trade based on the outcomes of real-world events. "We saw that most trading happens when people have some view about the future and then try to find a way to put that in the markets," Lara explained in an interview with Forbes.

Getting Kalshi off the ground wasn’t easy. The pair had to secure federal approval to operate as a designated contract market, which meant navigating a series of legal hurdles, including a lengthy battle with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In September 2024, they scored a major win when they won a key lawsuit, allowing Kalshi to offer regulated US election trading.

Kalshi's value has surged exponentially since then. In June 2025, the company was valued at 2 billion dollars . By December of the same year, after completing a 1 billion dollars  funding round, Kalshi’s valuation skyrocketed to 11 billion dollars . This leap into the billion-dollar club propelled both founders into billionaire territory. With a 12 per cent stake in Kalshi, Lopes Lara’s personal net worth now stands at an estimated 1.3 billion dollars .