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Luana Lopes Lara the co-founder of prediction market platform Kalshi has become the worlds youngest billionaire after her startup reached a $11 billion valuation. The 29-year-old a former ballerina took the youngest billionaire title from Scale AI’s Lucy Guo who recently surpassed Taylor Swift. Who is Luana Lopes Lara? Born in Brazil Luana Lopes Lara was a former professional ballerina in Austria before where she excelled in academics winning medals in the national Olympiad. Later Lara went to the United States where she studied computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At MIT Luana Lopes met her future business partner Tarek Mansour and the two grew close after he began sitting next to her in class to learn from her. Lopes and Mansour became even closer after both secured internships at Five Rings Capital in New York City in 2018 and during a walk back home one night they stumbled upon the idea of launching a prediction market business. “We saw that most trading happens when people have some view about the future and then try to find a way to put that in the markets” Lopes Lara had told Forbes in an interview. A former professional ballerina Lara was trained in ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre School which she says had a more intense ultra-competitive environment compared to time at the MIT.  How Luana Lopes Lara became worlds youngest billionaire? Luana Lopes Lara and her business partner Tarek Mansour broke into the global billionaires list after Kalshi raised $1 billion in a new round led by crypto-focused VC firm Paradigm with participation from Sequoia Capital Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator according to Forbes. After the fundraising round Lara and Mansour both 29 now boast an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion each as per Forbes. What is Kalshi? Co-founded by MIT graduates Luana Lopes Lara and Tarek Mansour in 2019 Kalshi is a New York City-based US financial exchange and prediction market which allows users to trade on future events ranging from elections and sports to pop culture moments. Before the latest funding round Kalshi was valued $5 billion in October and since July its trading volume has jumped eightfold to $5.8 billion in November. In 2020 Kalshi secured CFTC approval to become the first federally regulated prediction market platform a major milestone which distinguished it from unregulated competitors.