Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of prediction market Kalshi, became the youngest self-made female billionaire after her company announced a new $1 billion fundraising round on Tuesday.
The raise, led by crypto-focused venture capital firm Paradigm, values Kalshi at $11 billion and attracted participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator.
At 29, Lopes Lara overtakes former titleholder Lucy Guo of Scale AI and pop icon Taylor Swift, who briefly held the distinction earlier this year. Lopes Lara, born in Brazil and a computer science graduate from MIT, co-founded Kalshi in 2019 with Tarek Mansour, who now also joins the list of billionaires at the same age.
Yet Kalshi’s two founders were edged out in the youth race by Shayne Coplan, 27, founder of rival prediction platform Polymarket, who became the youngest self-made billionaire in October. Coplan’s rise follows a $2 billion investment commitment from the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owner of the New York Stock Exchange, in Polymarket at a valuation of $8 billion.
Kalshi allows users to trade on the outcome of real-world events – like election results, interest rate changes, or even celebrity divorces – via event-based regulated contracts. The platform was registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in November 2020, giving it formal regulatory status rarely seen in prediction markets.
Polymarket, on the other hand, is a blockchain-based prediction market that uses USDC stablecoins to allow users to bet on the outcomes of events without traditional financial regulation. It gained popularity thanks to its broad range of topics and faster market responses, but faced legal hurdles, including a 2022 settlement with the CFTC.
Both companies are reshaping the way people interact with information and risk. What were once casual bets — on who would win the Super Bowl or when inflation would slow — are now billion-dollar businesses. In this new world, anyone with a strong opinion and some capital can bet on future events in the same way that traders bet on stocks or commodities.
