Meet world's youngest self-made billionaire Luana Lopes Lara, know her education, career and net worth

Luana Lopes Lara has rapidly emerged as the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire, but her story isn’t one of overnight success. At 29, the Brazilian entrepreneur has reached a milestone very few achieve so early in life, rising to global prominence as cofounder of Kalshi, a fast-expanding prediction-market exchange now valued at $11 billion.

Her journey, stretching from rigorous ballet studios to elite tech labs and Wall Street trading floors, highlights an uncommon combination of discipline, intellect, and calculated risk-taking.

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Ballet Beginnings and an Intense Training Culture

Before entering the startup universe, Lopes Lara was immersed in high-performance ballet at Brazil’s Bolshoi Theater School. The institution’s physically demanding environment reportedly pushed dancers to extremes.

According to Forbes, instructors sometimes assessed students' stability with unusual methods, including “holding a lit cigarette under her raised leg to check how long she could maintain balance and form.” 

Training days stretched from dawn to night, where students competed ruthlessly- at times sabotaging rivals by hiding sharp objects in pointe shoes.

Academic Ambition and Early Achievements

Even while enduring this grueling regime, her academic aspirations never wavered. Motivated by parents rooted in math and engineering, she pursued academic contests competitively, burning midnight hours over problem sets and Olympiad prep. She earned national recognition with a gold in the Brazilian Astronomy Olympiad and a bronze in a state-level mathematics contest.

After graduating high school, she briefly danced professionally at the Salzburger Landestheater in Austria. Yet, ballet was not the final destination. Determined to build a career in technology, she left performance behind and enrolled at MIT to study Computer Science and Mathematics.

MIT Years and Exposure to Quantitative Finance

MIT became the launch pad for her shift toward quantitative finance and complex computational research. She worked across multiple labs- the MIT Media Lab, CSAIL, and the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department- and later completed an MEng under Dr. Max Kleiman-Weiner and Prof. Josh Tenenbaum.

Parallel internships at Bridgewater Associates, Citadel Securities, and Five Rings Capital gave her first-hand experience inside the world of hedge funds and high-frequency trading. During this period, she met fellow computer-science student Tarek Mansour.

Forbes recounted how their long, reflective walks home after internships sparked discussions about gaps in financial markets. “Traders often account for political or environmental developments indirectly,” she observed, wondering why no platform existed specifically for forecasting real-world outcomes.

Creating Kalshi and Navigating Legal Barriers

That idea evolved into Kalshi, which they presented at Y Combinator in 2019. The company would allow users to trade directly on probabilities of future events- from elections to sports to macroeconomic outcomes. But securing regulatory approval proved formidable. Dozens of law firms declined involvement, dismissing the founders as inexperienced and their business too risky.

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Former CFTC official Jeff Bandman eventually agreed to help, paving the way for a breakthrough. In November 2020, Kalshi received approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to operate as a designated contract market- becoming the first exchange of its kind in the U.S. This wasn’t their last legal test. When regulatory agencies attempted to block election-based contracts in 2023, Lopes Lara led the charge to contest the decision in court, even as investors feared backlash.

In 2024, a federal judge ruled in Kalshi’s favor, clearing the path for the first legal election contracts the country had seen in more than a century.

Becoming a Billionaire and Industry Trailblazer

A subsequent funding round featuring Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz boosted Kalshi’s valuation to $11 billion. According to The Independent, the jump raised the founders’ individual net worth to an estimated $1.3 billion- making Lopes Lara the youngest self-made female billionaire, surpassing previous record holders such as Lucy Guo and Taylor Swift.

Her background in dance, though seemingly distant from tech or finance, has been cited as a key strength. Andreessen Horowitz partner Alex Immerman told Forbes that classical training instills resilience, explaining that dancers learn to “keep moving despite constant setbacks.”

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A Rare Blend of Discipline and Innovation

From competitive ballet studios to high-stakes financial battles, Luana Lopes Lara’s story demonstrates how mental endurance and intellectual ambition can intersect to produce extraordinary outcomes. Her position as the youngest self-made woman billionaire represents not just personal success, but a dramatic reshaping of what modern fintech companies can build and who can build them.