It's over for Taylor Swift . The Music Queen has lost her status as the youngest self-made billionaire woman. At just 30, serial entrepreneur Lucy Guo has surpassed pop icon Taylor Swift to become the youngest self-made woman billionaire, according to Forbes. This milestone coincides with a major financial leap for her former startup, Scale AI , which is nearing a tender offer set for June 1. The deal, valuing the AI data annotation firm at $25 billion—an 80% jump from its $13.8 billion valuation last May—allows early employees and investors to cash out shares.
Who is Lucy Guo
Guo co-founded Scale AI in 2016, a company pivotal to the AI industry, providing essential data organization for machine learning models. Its clients include the US government and OpenAI. A first-generation Chinese-American from the Bay Area, Guo taught herself to code in middle school, briefly attended Carnegie Mellon University, and then left to join the Thiel Fellowship , a $100,000 grant program for young entrepreneurs founded by Peter Thiel , popularly known as Donald Trump's man in Silicon Valley. In fact it was PayPal cofounder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel who introduced his mentee, JD Vance, to President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021.
Before Scale AI, Guo worked at Quora, where she met co-founder Alexandr Wang, and later at Snapchat. After leaving Scale, she launched Backend Capital, a venture capital firm, and invested in startups like Ramp, now valued at billions. In 2022, she founded Passes, a subscription-based platform for creators akin to OnlyFans, which has raised $50 million and is valued at $150 million. Celebrities like Olivia Dunne and Shaquille O’Neal use the platform. Passes is a platform enabling creators to monetize their brands through subscriptions, live streams, one-on-one calls, and fan management tools.
Guo’s rise from a self-taught coder to a billionaire embodies the Silicon Valley dream, unseating Taylor Swift, 35, who held the title since Forbes named her a billionaire in 2023.
About the Thiel Fellowship
Founded by Peter Thiel, the Thiel Fellowship provides $100,000 and mentorship to young innovators who skip or leave college to pursue entrepreneurial ventures over two years. Incidentally, Thiel’s venture fund, Founders Fund, was also an early investor in several of Elon Musk’s companies, including space cargo business SpaceX, tunneling firm the Boring Company, and brain-chip startup Neuralink.
Who is Lucy Guo
Guo co-founded Scale AI in 2016, a company pivotal to the AI industry, providing essential data organization for machine learning models. Its clients include the US government and OpenAI. A first-generation Chinese-American from the Bay Area, Guo taught herself to code in middle school, briefly attended Carnegie Mellon University, and then left to join the Thiel Fellowship , a $100,000 grant program for young entrepreneurs founded by Peter Thiel , popularly known as Donald Trump's man in Silicon Valley. In fact it was PayPal cofounder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel who introduced his mentee, JD Vance, to President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021.
Before Scale AI, Guo worked at Quora, where she met co-founder Alexandr Wang, and later at Snapchat. After leaving Scale, she launched Backend Capital, a venture capital firm, and invested in startups like Ramp, now valued at billions. In 2022, she founded Passes, a subscription-based platform for creators akin to OnlyFans, which has raised $50 million and is valued at $150 million. Celebrities like Olivia Dunne and Shaquille O’Neal use the platform. Passes is a platform enabling creators to monetize their brands through subscriptions, live streams, one-on-one calls, and fan management tools.
Guo’s rise from a self-taught coder to a billionaire embodies the Silicon Valley dream, unseating Taylor Swift, 35, who held the title since Forbes named her a billionaire in 2023.
About the Thiel Fellowship
Founded by Peter Thiel, the Thiel Fellowship provides $100,000 and mentorship to young innovators who skip or leave college to pursue entrepreneurial ventures over two years. Incidentally, Thiel’s venture fund, Founders Fund, was also an early investor in several of Elon Musk’s companies, including space cargo business SpaceX, tunneling firm the Boring Company, and brain-chip startup Neuralink.
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