Lucy Guo
American entrepreneur
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lucy Guo is an American social media influencer and engineer who co-founded Scale AI in 2016 before being fired[1] in 2018. In 2022, she founded an OnlyFans competitor known as Passes.[2] Guo was the youngest self-made female billionaire until late 2025.[3][4][5]
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Lucy Guo | |
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| Born | October 14, 1994 California, U.S. |
| Education | Carnegie Mellon University (Dropped out) |
| Known for | Co-founding Scale AI and Passes Inc. |
Early life and education
Guo was raised in Fremont, California, by Chinese immigrant parents who worked as electrical engineers. She began coding at a young age; as a teenager she taught herself programming and earned money by developing bots for the online game Neopets and selling the in-game assets for profit.[6] Guo enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University where she studied computer science[6] but dropped out in 2014 after being selected for the Thiel Fellowship,[7][8] a two-year $250,000 grant for young people to pursue entrepreneurial projects instead of completing their studies.[6]
Career
After leaving Carnegie Mellon, Guo interned at Facebook before joining Snapchat as the company's first female designer.[9] At Snapchat, she helped develop Snap Maps.[10] She then moved to Quora where she met Alexandr Wang.[11] They co-founded Scale AI in 2016, but she was fired two years later in 2018.[1] When Meta bought Scale AI for $25 billion in May 2025, Guo replaced Taylor Swift to become the world's youngest self-made female billionaire.[12][13][14] She is one of only six self-made female billionaires to reach the milestone before age 40, according to Forbes.[15][16]
In 2018, Guo launched an app called Apply to Date allowing users to create a dating resume.[17]
In 2022, Guo founded Passes, an OnlyFans competitor.[18][19][2] As a Miami party girl, she used her connections with Miami-based entertainment agencies to launch the company.[18] It raised a $40 million Series A in 2024.[20] Passes acquired other creator platforms, including Fanhouse, founded by Rosie Nguyen.[21]
Passes was reported in 2024 to have allowed an account featuring a 12-year-old selling bikini photos after she had been banned by another platform. The account was removed only after the New York Times requested comment.[22] In 2025, Passes and Guo were sued by another creator who stated that they had distributed sexually abusive material of her when she was a child.[23][24][25] Guo's Passes platform claims that it does not allow nudity or sexual content and said the claim was "defamatory". [26]
In 2019, she launched Backend Capital,[27] originally called Backend Ventures,[28] a venture capital firm that primarily funded early-stage engineering startups.[29]
Personal life
She was "living as a digital nomad" for a number of years before buying a $6.7 million apartment in 2020 in Miami where her parties caused conflict with neighbors.[30][31] She was described by the New York Post in 2022 as Miami's number one party girl.[11]
As of 2024, she lived in Los Angeles after purchasing another $4.2 million home in West Hollywood.[32][33][34][35]