This Bay Area native just unseated Taylor Swift as world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire

FREMONT, Calif. - At age 30, Bay Area native and artificial intelligence entrepreneur Lucy Guo has now dethroned celebrity powerhouse Taylor Swift as the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire, in a new Forbes review.

As of Tuesday, Forbes put her real-time net worth at $1.3 billion. 

In 2016, Guo co-founded San Francisco-based Scale AI when she was only 21, along with Alexandr Wang. 

SEE ALSO: Forbes 'new billionaires' include former governor Schwarzenegger and Bay Area figures

She left the company in 2018, reportedly over disagreements about its direction and operations. 

By the numbers:

But she has retained a stake in Scale AI, of almost 5%, according to Forbes. Last year, the firm was valued at $13.8 billion after a round of funding that raised $1 billion. 

Estimates now put the value of the privately-held company as high as $25 billion as it finalizes a potential tender offer expected to be completed by next month.

Guo would not comment on whether she planned to sell any of her stakes as part of the tender offer, according to Forbes. 

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Following her departure from Scale AI, Guo co-founded a venture capital firm, Backend Capital, before returning to the start-up world. 

In 2022, she launched Passes, a direct-to-fan engagement platform. Similar to sites like OnlyFans and Patreon, Passes provides tools for content creators to monetize their fan base.    

"Passes signed deals with celebrities including gymnast Olivia Dunne, basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal and DJ Kygo," Forbes reported, noting the company raised $50 million from investors over two years starting in 2022.

Amid the recognition Guo has received for her business savvy and remarkable success, she's also made recent headlines over a lawsuit accusing Passes of facilitating the distribution of child pornography and exploiting underage creators.

The company has refuted the claims, saying, "In line with its mission, Passes forbids the uploading of explicit content and actively works to identify and remove any violations of its guidelines."

The company called the legal action a smear campaign and said, "To be clear, any claim that Passes approved or condoned the posting of explicit content from any user, particularly a minor, on its platform is categorically false and recklessly disregards the truth."

Elite group 

Forbes listed Guo as one of only six self-made women billionaires under the age of 40 worldwide.

She replaces 35-year-old Taylor Swift as the youngest in that category, a distinction that the global star and singer-songwriter has held since Forbes declared her a billionaire in 2023.

Guo was recognized in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2018.

Bay Area roots 

A native of Fremont, her parents are Chinese immigrants who were electrical engineers.

A Passes spokesperson told KTVU the company's CEO and co-founder lived in the Bay Area for two decades and is now based in Los Angeles.  

Forbes reported that Guo began coding while in middle school with her interest in computer science and her entrepreneurial prowess blossoming at an early age.

Guo attended Foothill High School in Pleasanton, where she left her mark.

A spokesperson shared a photo of a touching letter Guo wrote to a high school teacher. 

The letter read in part, "I know I drove you crazy sophomore year… thanks for putting up with me though. You literally changed my way of thinking toward life."

The letter was saved by the teacher all these years, the spokesperson said.  

Guo’s English teacher both her sophomore and senior years at Foothill, said she remains close with her former student and has "watched her meteoric rise."

Lisa Sohn shared a sweet photo from 2012 of Guo attending her senior ball.  

Sohn remembered Guo as a good student, though she added that she wasn’t at the top of her class.

What they're saying:

"I think she was bored by a lot of the traditional curriculum," Sohn reflected, adding, "She knew she was smart. Her mind was clearly busy creating ideas."

Those ideas led to programming and building online businesses that led to financial success even as a teen. 

Sohn noted that her success came at a time when it was not common for girls to demonstrate such talents in the computer science realm. 

The teacher said Guo's talents and her approach of not backing down in the face of challenge were evident even back then. 

"Lucy is a risk taker; she is willing to jump when others hesitate. She also knows how to innovate, design, and implement," the teacher shared. 

Sohn said Guo’s time at Foothill may have, in an indirect way, helped the billionaire ardently go after her passions. 

"She had teachers that nurtured her emotionally and gave her a safe place to quietly believe that even her wildest dreams could come true," the English teacher said.  

College drop-out 

After Foothill, Guo then went on to attend college at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.

But in 2014, after two years in college, she dropped out to become a Thiel Fellow. The two-year program, "for young people who want to build new things," was founded by tech investor Peter Thiel. It offers Thiel fellows a $100,000 grant and support to skip or leave college to begin new ventures. 

At only 30, Guo has been described as someone who has been at the forefront of the tech, AI world, and an ambitious and driven entrepreneur, with a rebellious and unapologetic approach, unafraid to take the unconventional route. 

Beyond the ‘glass ceiling’

And in an industry dominated by male leaders, Guo has gone beyond just breaking the glass ceiling. The young billionaire has reached new heights. 

Guo's high school English teacher shared that her former student had sought guidance from her at a crucial turning point in her career: when she was thinking about leaving Snapchat, where she was working as a program designer, to launch Scale AI. 

Sohn said, "She obviously had already made her decision, but I asked her what she wanted to achieve in the next decade."

It seems even Guo herself couldn't have imagined where she would be today. 

"She said she wanted to be a millionaire by 30," the teacher shared, "so being a billionaire was not in her mind." 

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