Luana Lopes Lara, a 29-year-old former ballerina and MIT graduate, has achieved an extraordinary feat, becoming the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.
In just six years, she co-founded Kalshi, a prediction market firm, which now boasts a valuation of $11 billion, cementing her place among the world’s elite entrepreneurs.
Lopes Lara is a Brazilian native, . She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a degree in computer science, spending her college summers working for industry titans like Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates and Ken Griffin’s Citadel.
Lopes Lara’s big break came when she co-founded Kalshi in 2017 with fellow MIT graduate, Tarek Mansour. The company, which allows users to place bets on the outcome of future events, from elections to sports games, has rapidly grown into a billion-dollar enterprise.
Kalshi’s latest funding round, led by crypto-focused Paradigm and backed by Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Y Combinator, propelled the company’s valuation to $11 billion.
Kalshi’s model has revolutionised financial markets, creating an entirely new asset class.
According to Mansour, “We literally are creating an entire new asset class, a completely new financial product.”
The company’s rise has been nothing short of meteoric. Kalshi’s valuation has skyrocketed, climbing from $2 billion in June to $5 billion in October, and now reaching $11 billion.
The cofounders each own an estimated 12% of the company, making them both billionaires.
“There’s a lot of other people wanting a piece of this business now that Kalshi has shown how big it is,” says Ali Partovi, CEO of Neo, a venture fund and early investor in Kalshi.
But the path to success wasn’t easy. Early on, Kalshi faced significant legal hurdles regarding the legality of prediction markets. Lopes Lara and Mansour spent years battling for federal approval to operate legally, eventually winning the backing of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in November 2020.
In 2024, Kalshi made history by offering the first legal election contracts in the U.S. in over a century. Their prediction markets have since gained widespread traction, with Kalshi users betting over $500 million on the 2024 U.S. presidential election alone.
