The New Youngest Billionaire in the World – But You Don’t Know Her #
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A new name has claimed the title of youngest female billionaire, but chances are you’ve never seen her name before. You’re more likely to know her company.
29-year-old Luana Lopes Lara, founder of Kalshi, has been named the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion (€940 million). Kalshi, the online betting platform where users can wager on real-world event outcomes, has gained enormous popularity this year.
From Ballet to Tech #
Luana Lopes Lara’s path to a billion-dollar fortune began far from Silicon Valley. As a teenager, she underwent rigorous ballet training at the Bolshoi Theatre School in Brazil, where competition was fierce and discipline was hard. She herself recalls this time as “the most intense years of her life.”
But her ambitions ultimately lay elsewhere. She wanted to become the new Steve Jobs. After a brief period as a professional ballerina in Europe, she decided to trade her pointe shoes for textbooks and moved to the United States.
At MIT, she studied computer science and mathematics, where she met Lebanese-American Tarek Mansour. Together, they saw a gap in the market: people constantly make financial decisions based on future expectations, but can rarely act directly on them.
In 2018, they founded Kalshi, a platform where users can trade on events such as election results, sports matches, and economic data.
Kalshi Breaks Through #
Interest in the platform was certainly there, but there were some major obstacles in the way. The regulation around prediction markets proved complicated, and the US regulator CFTC regularly stood in the way. Nevertheless, Kalshi persevered.
Eventually, the platform became the first in over a hundred years to receive permission to legally offer election contracts in the US. That moment led to enormous growth and attracted major investors.
Kalshi is now valued at $11 billion (€9.38 billion), making both Lopes Lara and Mansour billionaires. The platform processes billions in trading volume weekly and is gaining increasing recognition. For instance, the platform was the subject of a South Park episode.
Additionally, Kalshi is increasingly moving into the crypto space. Recently, the markets have been integrated with Solana, as the company takes steps towards blockchain-based infrastructure.