Through programming, Lucy Guo earned the title of the youngest self-made female billionaire, meaning she did not inherit her fortune.
The American, daughter of Chinese immigrants, started studying Computer Science but decided to abandon the traditional career path after being accepted into the Thiel Fellowship, a program that offers $100,000 to young people to pursue an innovation path.
At the beginning of her career, Guo worked as an intern at Snapchat and Facebook. At 21, in 2016, she helped co-found Scale AI, a company that used data to assist in machine learning for artificial intelligence.
She left the company after 2 years but retained a 5% stake. After the global boom in AI usage, Scale’s services became even more relevant to generative models, like ChatGPT from OpenAI.
Scale, which is set to receive a new round of investment, is valued at $25 billion, making Guo’s fortune $1.2 billion. This means that at 30 years old, she is the youngest woman to become a billionaire without inheriting the wealth.
Outside of Scale, Guo continued developing applications. In 2019, she founded Backend Capital, which manages capital for developing startups, and she is currently the CEO of Passes, founded in 2022.
Passes, which raised $40 billion in an investment round last year, is a tool designed to help influencers monetize their content and gain more autonomy over their productions.
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Photo and video: Instagram @guoforit. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
