She now stands as one of six self-made women billionaires under 40, along with Taylor Swift, Kylie Jenner, and Rihanna.
Lucy Guo doesn’t run a music empire, headline global stadium tours, or have Grammy trophies lining her shelves. But at just 30 years old, the tech founder and investor has officially overtaken Taylor Swift to become the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire according to Forbes.
Guo’s estimated net worth now sits at $1.25 billion, most of which comes from her early stake in Scale AI, a data-focused startup she co-founded in 2016.
Guo grew up in Fremont, California. Her parents, both engineers, lost their jobs when she was young. By middle school, she was already teaching herself to code. In high school, she figured out how to make money online through games and websites. She got into Carnegie Mellon for computer science but didn’t stick around long. A few credits shy of graduating, she took a risk and joined the Thiel Fellowship. It paid her $100,000 to drop out and start building something.
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The startup that changed everything
In 2016, at 21, Guo co-founded Scale AI with Alexandr Wang, whom she met at Quora and was then 19. At first, it was about helping self-driving cars understand what they were seeing. Later, it became much bigger, used for satellite images in Ukraine and to train systems like ChatGPT.
Scale then blew up and landed big clients, raised money, and made both founders—yes, rich. But two years in, Guo was pushed out after a disagreement. She stayed quiet, kept her shares, and moved on. This year, Scale’s value hit $25 billion. Her stake which is about 5% is now worth over $1.2 billion.
After leaving Scale, Guo started a small investment fund and backed early-stage startups including Ramp, a fintech company now worth $13 billion.
In 2022, she launched Passes, a platform where creators can make money directly from fans through subscriptions, livestreams, video calls, and more. It’s kind of like Patreon or OnlyFans, but with more tech behind it. Passes also uses AI to build digital versions of creators, so fans can interact with them even when they’re offline.
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A different kind of billionaire
It’s an impressive feat, and what makes it more surprising is this: Guo’s not your typical billionaire. She’s a college dropout, a self-taught coder, and someone who grew up without a silver spoon.
She also follows a “live below your means” mindset. Influenced by the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early), Guo said she didn’t start spending money freely until she had saved at least $10 million. Her advice is to save as much as you can, then invest.
At 30, Lucy Guo now stands as one of only six self-made women billionaires under 40, along with Taylor Swift, Kylie Jenner, and Rihanna. She’s also the only one who made most of her fortune from a company she no longer runs. “I don’t think much about becoming the No. 1 female billionaire. It’s a bit wild. Too bad it’s all on paper, haha,” she told Forbes in a text in response to her billionaire status.
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