A former ballerina has become the world's youngest self-made billionaire.

According to Forbes, 29-year-old Luana Lopes Lara has officially become the world's youngest self-made female billionaire. The former professional ballerina achieved this status thanks to the rapid growth of her startup, Kalshi, to a valuation of $11 billion.

According to the magazine, Luana's personal fortune is now estimated at $1.3 billion. This allowed her to displace the previous leader in the ranking, 31-year-old Scale AI co-founder Lucy Guo, and also surpass global stars such as singer Taylor Swift in terms of wealth accumulation. However, the Brazilian woman's path to the top of the financial world began in a completely different environment – the cruel world of classical ballet.

Glass in Pointe Shoes and Astronomy Olympiads

Luana was born in Brazil to a family of technical intellectuals: her mother was a mathematics teacher, and her father was an electrical engineer. It was her parents who instilled in her a love for the exact sciences and the ambition to become the "next Steve Jobs." However, the girl's youth was spent in grueling training at the prestigious Bolshoi Theater school in Brazil.

As Forbes notes, Luana calls her school years the most intense of her life. The schedule was ruthless: from 7 a.m. to noon, she studied general subjects, and from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., she practiced ballet. Competition among dancers reached extremes: fellow dancers hid shards of glass in each other's shoes to get ahead.

Teaching methods were also harsh. Luana recalls how teachers checked her endurance by holding a lit cigarette under her thigh when she stretched her leg all the way to her ear – it was a test of how long she could hold the position without getting burned.

Павялічыць

Despite the physical exertion, the girl showed excellent academic progress. She prepared for academic competitions at night, winning gold at the national astronomy olympiad and bronze at the mathematics olympiad. After graduating from school, Luana worked as a professional ballerina in Austria for nine months, but eventually decided to hang up her pointe shoes and move to the United States.

The Path to Wall Street

In the United States, Luana enrolled at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied computer science. At the university, she met Tariq Mansour, a native of Lebanon, who became her close friend and later her business partner.

During a joint internship in New York, they came up with the idea of creating Kalshi – an online platform that allows users to bet on future events, such as elections, sports games, or even celebrity engagements.

Implementing the idea turned out to be a difficult task. The partners faced the need to obtain permission from the U.S. federal authorities, as prediction markets are under close state control. The young founders approached more than 40 law firms, but all refused to help them due to their youth and the scale of the risk.

Павялічыць

"Right after college, we took a crazy risk. We didn't have a single product for two years... and if we hadn't gotten permission, the company's value would have dropped to zero," the entrepreneur said. The situation was complicated by the pandemic: Luana was trying to build a business from London, and Tariq was in Beirut.

Nevertheless, perseverance paid off. The company not only obtained a license, but also won a lawsuit against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which allowed the platform to legally accept bets on the results of the U.S. elections in the fall of 2024.

Павялічыць

In the run-up to the elections, Kalshi users bet more than $500 million on candidates and correctly predicted President Trump's victory. As a result, the popularity of the service skyrocketed. According to the publication, a recent round of investment increased Kalshi's valuation fivefold – to $11 billion. Today, Luana Lopes Lara owns 12% of the company's shares.

Investors are convinced that it was Luana's ballet training that helped her to persevere. "There are few places that teach you to hear 'no' and still move forward like professional ballet," Forbes quotes one of the investors as saying. "Luana learned persistence and grace early on... and transferred that calm confidence to building a business."

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