From ballerina to billionaire: 29-year-old Luana Lopes Lara becomes world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire

Brazilian entrepreneur Luana Lopes Lara, who cofounded prediction market platform Kalshi, has claimed the title of world's youngest self-made woman billionaire at age 29, according to a report by Forbes.

Lara went from gruelling ballet training to building her fintech startup, which is now valued at around $11 billion, after a $1 billion fundraise.

The report added that Kalshi's recent funding round put Lara and cofounder Tarek Mansour, each holding about 12% of the company, in the billionaire cohort.


About Lara

Born in Brazil, Lara spent her teenage years as a ballerina at the Bolshoi Theater School, where she trained for up to 10 hours a day. She pursued a career in dance for months in Austria after finishing high school but then changed tack to academics.

The ballerina earned degrees in computer science and math from MIT, including a master's in engineering with research in cognitive science.

After her education, she entered the quantitative finance space, interning at top firms like Citadel Securities and Bridgewater Associates, and in 2018, launched Kalshi with fellow MIT grad Mansour.

The platform lets users trade on real-world events, from economic reports to elections, turning uncertainty into an investable asset class.

Kalshi is a Y Combinator alum, and has won CFTC approval as the first fully regulated event-contract exchange. It is backed by the likes of Sequoia, a16z, and Paradigm.

According to Forbes, the platform experienced high trading volumes during the 2024 US election, hitting billions.

With the latest fundraise, Lara has grabbed the youngest female billionaire spot from Taylor Swift and Scale AI's Lucy Guo.