Kalshi’s Luana Lopes Lara Becomes Youngest Female Self-Made Billionaire

Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of the prediction market Kalshi, has become the youngest female self-made billionaire after her company announced a fresh $1 billion funding round Tuesday.

The raise, led by crypto-focused venture firm Paradigm, valued Kalshi at $11 billion and drew participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator.

At 29, Lopes Lara overtakes previous 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 of MIT, co-founded Kalshi in 2019 with Tarek Mansour, who also now joins the billionaires list at the same age.

Still, both Kalshi 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 followed a $2 billion investment commitment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, into Polymarket at an $8 billion valuation.

Kalshi allows users to trade on the outcome of real-world events — like election results, interest rate changes or even celebrity divorces — through regulated, event-based contracts. The platform became registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in November 2020, giving it a formal regulatory status rarely seen in prediction markets.

Polymarket, by contrast, is a blockchain-based prediction market that uses USDC stablecoins to let users bet on event outcomes without traditional financial regulation. It has gained popularity for its wide range of topics and faster market responses, but has had to navigate legal hurdles, including a 2022 settlement with the CFTC.

Both companies are reshaping how people engage with information and risk. What used to be informal bar bets — on who would win the Super Bowl or when inflation would cool — are now billion-dollar businesses. In this new world, anyone with a strong opinion and some capital can wager on future events the same way traders bet on stocks or commodities.