The key path
- Luana Lopez is the cofounder of Lara Kalshi, a platform that allows users to bet on the outcome of future events.
- After raising $1 billion in funding earlier this week, Kalashi is now worth $11 billion.
- Lopes Lara’s 12 percent stake in Kalashi brings her net worth to $1.3 billion, making her the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.
Stepping aside, Lucy Guo—a new billionaire—has joined the ten-figure club.
Kulshi cofounder Luana Lopes Lara, 29, became the youngest self-made female billionaire on Tuesday when her startup announced $1 billion in funding at a valuation of $11 billion. Venture capital firm Paradigm led the raise, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Kalashi is a platform that allows users to bet on future events, such as elections, interest rate changes and the outcome of celebrity divorces. The Site is legal and regulated in the United States.
“We found that most trades happen when people have some vision of the future,” Lopes Lara previously said. Forbes.

In less than two months, Kalshi’s diagnosis has doubled. It was initially valued at $5 billion after raising $300 million in October.
Related: This billionaire says life ‘hasn’t really changed that much’ after making billions. This is where she spends the money.
Lopes Lara’s 12% stake in Kalashi brings her net worth to $1.3 billion, making her the youngest female billionaire not to inherit her wealth but to create it herself. Forbes. He takes the crown from previous titleholder Lucy Gow, the 31-year-old cofounder of Scale A, and singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, 35, who briefly held the honor earlier this year.
Luana Lopes Who is Lara?
López Lara graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics, according to his LinkedIn. He spent his college summers working for the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates as a software engineer and Stedel Securities as a quantitative trader.
According to ForbesLopes Lara considers high school “the most intense years of her life”. She took academic courses from 7 a.m. to noon, and then ballet classes from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Bolshoi Theater School in Brazil.
The cutthroat program meant he had to deal with classmates putting shards of glass in each other’s shoes to get ahead. She studied at night for academic competitions and won a gold medal at the Astronomy Olympiad in Brazil and a bronze medal at the Santa Catarina Mathematics Olympiad.
Related: This AI Startup Just Made Its 4 Co-Founders Billionaires—And They’re All Under 30
After graduating high school, Lopes Lara worked as a professional ballerina in Austria for nine months before matriculating at MIT and beginning her undergraduate studies.
At MIT, Lopes Lara met a fellow computer science major, Tarik Mansour, who had worked as a quantitative trader and technologist at Goldman Sachs, Stedel, and Palantir. The two launched Kulshi in 2018.
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The key path
- Luana Lopez is the cofounder of Lara Kalshi, a platform that allows users to bet on the outcome of future events.
- After raising $1 billion in funding earlier this week, Kalashi is now worth $11 billion.
- Lopes Lara’s 12 percent stake in Kalashi brings her net worth to $1.3 billion, making her the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.
Stepping aside, Lucy Guo—a new billionaire—has joined the ten-figure club.
Kulshi cofounder Luana Lopes Lara, 29, became the youngest self-made female billionaire on Tuesday when her startup announced $1 billion in funding at a valuation of $11 billion. Venture capital firm Paradigm led the raise, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
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