Taylor Swift has been replaced by Lucy Guo, the 30-year-old co-founder of Scale AI, as the youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world. Swift had held this title since late 2023, after Forbes declared her a billionaire due to the success of her Eras Tour. At that time, Swift was just 33 years old.
This week, Forbes revealed that Lucy Guo is now the youngest self-made woman billionaire. But who exactly is Lucy Guo?
Guo is a computer science college dropout who co-founded the artificial intelligence company Scale AI in 2016 with Alexandr Wang, at just 21 years old. Though she left the company in 2018 due to disagreements over its management, she retained most of her stake. Guo now owns just under 5% of Scale AI, which is valued at nearly $1.2 billion.
A daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, Guo grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She began coding in middle school and studied computer science and human-computer interactions at Carnegie Mellon University. She dropped out of college to become a Thiel Fellow, a program sponsored by billionaire investor Peter Thiel.
Before founding Scale AI, Guo worked as a product designer at Quora, where she met future co-founder Alexandr Wang. She also briefly worked at Snapchat before co-founding Scale AI.
After leaving Scale AI, Guo started Backend Capital, a small venture capital firm, and later founded Passes in 2022. Passes is a platform similar to Patreon and OnlyFans, allowing creators and celebrities to connect with fans through paid chats and videos.
However, Passes faced controversy last month when it was accused of hosting child sexual assault material in a lawsuit. The platform has since banned underage creators. A spokesperson for Passes denied any wrongdoing, stating that the platform did not approve or condone such content and that the allegations were baseless.