Brazil has a new name in the global innovation spotlight — and she’s only 29. Luana Lopes Lara, cofounder of Kalshi, has just become the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire after her startup reached an US$11 billion valuation, according to Forbes.
Her path, however, started far from Wall Street. Long before MIT, venture capital giants and multimillion-dollar funding rounds, Lopes Lara was enduring one of the most brutal ballet programs in the world.
A childhood shaped by discipline — and survival
Luana grew up in Brazil dreaming of becoming “the next Steve Jobs,” as she told Forbes. But first, she survived the unforgiving routine of the Bolshoi Theatre School in Brazil — a place where discipline is taken literally to the extreme.
Her teachers held lit cigarettes under her thigh to test how long she could keep her leg raised without getting burned. Fellow dancers hid glass shards in each other’s shoes to gain an edge. And before even stepping into the studio, Luana completed academic classes from 7 a.m. to noon.
Then came eight hours of ballet.
Despite the intensity, she kept studying late into the night, inspired by her mother, a math teacher, and her father, an electrical engineer. That dedication brought her medals in the Brazilian Astronomy Olympiad and the Santa Catarina Mathematics Olympiad.
After graduating high school in December, she moved to Austria and danced professionally for nine months. But she had already decided that ballet wasn’t her final act.
MIT, a new world — and a new idea
Luana moved to the United States to study computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her college years, she interned at some of the most competitive hedge funds on the planet, including Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates and Ken Griffin’s Citadel.
It was at MIT that she met Tarek Mansour, a Lebanese student who, like her, had come from a high-pressure background and a fierce academic path.
He remembers how she always sat in the front row of their classes — something that impressed him and pushed him to sit next to her to learn more, according to Forbes.
In 2018, both were selected for internships at Five Rings Capital in New York. And it was during late-night walks back to their shared intern housing in the Financial District that the idea for Kalshi emerged.
They believed there should be a way to directly trade the probability of real-world events — something traders were already doing indirectly through markets affected by elections, inflation, and geopolitical risks.
Two years, zero product — and 40 lawyers saying no
The duo joined Y Combinator in 2019. But building a prediction-market startup required regulatory clarity that didn’t exist.
According to Forbes, they contacted more than 40 law firms, and all refused to help — the founders were “too young” and the startup “too risky.”
Meanwhile, the pandemic forced them apart:
Luana worked from London, while Mansour was in Beirut, living through the deadly port explosion and helping neighbors by day while working on Kalshi at night.
The turning point came when former CFTC official Jeff Bandman agreed to take their case. In November 2020, Kalshi became the first platform in the U.S. to receive federal approval to operate as a designated contract market for event-based derivatives.
It was an unprecedented milestone — and a massive competitive advantage.
A valuation that jumped from US$2 billion to US$11 billion
Kalshi’s growth has been explosive.
The company was valued at:
- US$2 billion in June
- US$5 billion in October
- US$11 billion in the latest round led by Paradigm
Investors include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator and others.
Each founder owns roughly 12% of the company — enough to place Luana and Mansour at US$1.3 billion in net worth each.
As CEO Ali Partovi of Neo (a seed investor) told Forbes:
“There’s a lot of other people wanting a piece of this business now that Kalshi has shown how big it is.”
Trading volume jumped eightfold since July, reaching US$5.8 billion in November.
Challenging U.S. regulators — and winning
Even after securing federal authorization, Kalshi’s regulatory saga was far from over.
In late 2023, the CFTC rejected Kalshi’s election markets, claiming they resembled gambling. Investors advised against fighting the agency.
Luana didn’t agree.
According to Forbes, she was the one who proposed suing the regulator — a bold move for any company, let alone one founded by two 20-somethings.
In September 2024, a U.S. District Court ruled in favor of Kalshi, allowing the platform to offer regulated election contracts for the first time in over a century.
Users bet more than US$500 million ahead of the 2024 U.S. election and correctly predicted Donald Trump’s victory.
How a ballerina from Brazil is reshaping financial markets
Even in the face of legal gray areas and market competition — including the rapid rise of blockchain-based Polymarket — investors repeatedly highlight one reason for Kalshi’s resilience: Luana herself.
As a16z partner Alex Immerman told Forbes:
“There are few better trainings for being told ‘no’ and pushing through anyway than being a professional ballerina.”
Kalshi is now expanding through partnerships with major brokers, sports leagues, and crypto ecosystems. Its goal, as Luana told Forbes, is straightforward and ambitious:
“We really wanted to do things the right way because our vision was to build the biggest financial exchange in the world.”
Her rise marks a rare combination of discipline, technical rigor, and global ambition — a journey that began in Brazil and now reaches one of the most influential arenas in modern finance.
