AI startup founder Lucy Guo replaces Taylor Swift as world's youngest self-made woman billionaire

Co-founder of Scale AI Lucy Guo and (right) pop icon Taylor Swift (Image credit: Lucy Guo/Instagram, AFP)

Tech entrepreneur Lucy Guo has officially become the youngest self-made woman billionaire, overtaking pop icon Taylor Swift. At just 30, Guo now holds a spot on Forbes’ prestigious list, joining only five other self-made women under 40 with billionaire status. Swift, 35, has a net worth of about $1.6 billion, as per Forbes.

She is best known as the co-founder of Scale AI, the San Francisco-based generative AI company she launched in 2016. Although she exited the company in 2018, her estimated 5 percent stake has continued to grow in value. The company is currently valued at $14 billion, but a tender offer in progress could boost its valuation to $25 billion — pushing Guo’s stake to approximately $1.3 billion.

After her departure from Scale AI, Guo co-founded Backend Capital, a venture capital firm focused on investing in talented engineers. She didn’t stay away from startups for long, however. Guo is now the CEO of Passes, a platform she founded that provides monetisation tools for content creators — a competitor to services like Patreon and OnlyFans.

Despite being a billionaire, Guo has long championed a minimalist approach to money management. “Live below your means,” she has advised those seeking to build wealth.

She had earlier told Fortune that she was heavily influenced by the FIRE (financially independent, retire early) movement in her early career. “I would go onto Reddit and look up Lean FIRE and Fat FIRE forums, because they really do teach you a lot about money management and wealth. If you’re young, you can afford to get a lower salary," Guo said, adding that she could “retire off of, essentially, not that much money and still live a pretty nice lifestyle.”

Now, according to Forbes, Guo is the only self-made woman billionaire under 40 who earned the majority of her fortune from a company she no longer actively works with. Her rise to billionaire status has been fueled not only by her early work in AI, but also by her strategic use of professional networks and adherence to financial independence principles, often associated with the FIRE movement.