Brazilian Luana Lopes Lara, 29 years old, has just joined the group of new “self-made” billionaires, that is, without having inherited a fortune. She has just surpassed it, as the youngest in the world to achieve the feat.
Luana is the co-founder and director of operations at Kalshi, a prediction platform that rivals Polymarket, which allows you to bet on real-world events, such as the Oscars, elections, among others.
following a US$1 billion Series E investment round, led by Paradigm and with participation from giants such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator, announced this Wednesday (3).
Luana is from Joinville, in Santa Catarina, and her trajectory was unconventional. Daughter of a mathematics teacher and an electrical engineer, Luana had a childhood marked by discipline and competitiveness. Her routine consisted of classical ballet classes at one of the most renowned academies in the country, the Bolshoi Theater School, undergoing extreme training (with daily shifts from 7am to 9pm between academic and dance classes).
Defining herself as a “math nerd”, the co-founder of Kalshi went on to win a gold medal at the Brazilian Astronomy Olympiad and bronze at the Santa Catarina Mathematics Olympiad.
After high school, she spent nine months dancing professionally in Austria, until she decided to exchange stages for laboratories, which took her to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she graduated in Computer Science and Mathematics.
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It was at MIT that he met Tarek Mansour, his future partner, with whom he founded Kalshi in 2018, when he was still a student. During his undergraduate summers, he interned at large Wall Street managers, such as Bridgewater Associates, owned by Ray Dalio, and Citadel, owned by Ken Griffin, in addition to working at Five Rings Capital.
Currently, as COO of Kalshi, Luana leads the strategy and operations of a company that generates more than US$1 billion per week. His fortune comes from the 10% to 20% stake he holds in the company, according to the New York Times, equivalent to billionaire assets in market value.
