Luana Lopes Lara’s route to startup success started far from the usual founder resume. Before co-founding Kalshi, she spent her teenage years splitting days between academics and hours-long ballet training in Brazil, then briefly worked as a professional ballerina in Austria before heading to MIT. In 2018, she met fellow computer science major Tarek Mansour and started Kalshi, a platform where users trade on the outcomes of future events. In December, the company announced a $1 billion funding round led by Paradigm, with Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz participating, valuing Kalshi at $11 billion and making Lopes Lara—at 29—the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.
Lopes Lara’s 12% stake puts her net worth at about $1.3 billion, and Kalshi’s valuation doubled in less than two months, up from $5 billion after a $300 million raise in October. The company operates legally and under regulation in the U.S., and its product sits at the intersection of finance, news, and forecasting, letting users place bets on outcomes like elections, interest rate changes, and even celebrity divorces. The funding surge puts Kalshi among the fastest-climbing valuations in the category.
