Luana Lopes Lara
Brazilian entrepreneur
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Luana Lopes Lara (born 1996) is a Brazilian entrepreneur and former ballerina, who currently serves as the chief operating officer (COO) of the online prediction market site Kalshi, which she co-founded with Tarek Mansour.[1] She currently has a net worth of about $2.6 billion at the age of 29 in 2026, making her the youngest woman billionaire and joining the list of America's richest self-made women according to Forbes.[2][3][4]
Youngest self-made woman billionaire
Luana Lopes Lara | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1996 (age 29–30) |
| Education | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS) |
| Known for | Co-founder of Kalshi Youngest self-made woman billionaire |
Early life and education
Lara was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in May 20, 1996. For eight years she attended a Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Joinville, before being engaged in a production of Swan Lake at the Salzburger Landestheater in Austria for a few months.[3][5][6] According to Forbes, Lara has won a gold medal for Brazilian Astronomy Olympiad and bronze at the Santa Catarina Mathematics Olympiad during her youth.[7]
At age 18, she decided to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from where she graduated with a degree in computer science in 2018.[3][8][5]
While a student at MIT, Lara interned at Bridgewater Associates and Citadel Securities.[9]
Career
In 2018, Lara founded Kalshi with Tarek Mansour, whom she met while the two were students at MIT.[10][11] Following multiple rounds of venture capital funding led by Paradigm totaling more than $1 billion in volume in late 2025, Kalshi was valued at $11 billion.[3][5]
In December 2025, Forbes reported that, Lara became the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire at age 29, displacing previous titleholder Scale AI-cofounder Lucy Guo.[3] Her networth, estimated to be about $2.6 billion largely derives from her 12% stake in Kalshi.[3][12]
In 2024, Kalshi received federal approval to offer contracts on U.S. presidential elections. It was the first time in more than a century that such trading had been legally permitted in the United States.[3]
