Who is Lucy Guo? Everything about Scale AI co-founder who overtook Taylor Swift as the youngest self-made woman billionaire

Lucy Guo has been officially announced as a billionaire, making her the youngest self-made woman billionaire. She surpasses Taylor Swift, who has held that record since 2023.

Lucy Guo is an American social media influencer, entrepreneur, and engineer who was raised in California by Chinese immigrant parents. She fell in love with coding at a very young age and began teaching herself programming in her teens, making money by developing bots for online games.

She gained admission into Carnegie Mellon but dropped out in 2014 after being selected for The Thiel Fellowship, a two-year grant of $100,000 that enables young creatives to complete entrepreneurial projects rather than finish school.

After leaving school, Lucy Guo worked for Facebook, Snap Chat, and Quora, where she met Alexandr Wang. The duo co-founded Scale AI in 2016; she was reportedly fired in 2018 by Wang. The reason is a ‘difference of opinion’ as reported by Guo.

More details on Lucy Guo becoming the youngest self-made woman billionaire

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According to Forbes, Lucy Guo’s billionaire status comes years after the 30-year-old entrepreneur refused to part with her stake in Scale AI even after being fired by Wand in 2018.

“Despite leaving years ago, Scale AI's 30-year-old cofounder has become the youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world by holding onto her stake in the company,” Forbes reports.

Scale AI began a tender offer, which allowed early employees and investors to sell their shares to new or returning investors. The Buzzy Artificial Intelligence company has begun wrapping up the offer, which is slated to conclude by June 1. This move has increased the company's value from $13.8 billion to $25 billion—a more than 80% jump in value since its evaluation last year.

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The company's new valuation has confirmed Lucy Duo’s status as a billionaire, unseating 35-year-old Taylor Swift from the position of youngest self-made billionaire woman. Lucy’s close to five percent stake in Scale AI is estimated to be worth close to $1.2 billion.

“I don’t really think about it much; it’s a bit wild. Too bad it’s all on paper, haha,” Lucy said via text message, as reported by Forbes.

After she departed from Scale AI in 2018, Lucy began a small capital firm called Backend Capital to help invest in early-stage companies. In 2022, Guo started her own company called Passes, often referred to as a competitor to the popular site OnlyFans.

The rapidly growing company has had its fair share of controversies. In 2024, it was reportedly accused of allowing an underage model to use the platform after being denied by another platform. Passes deleted the said model's account after being questioned by several news sites. In 2025, the company was hit with a lawsuit claiming that it hosted child assault material. Following the lawsuit, Passes banned all accounts of underage creators, removing all content from its site.

“The company refutes any claims that it approved or condoned the posting of underage explicit content on its platform. Any effort to attribute alleged misconduct of third parties to Passes is baseless and nothing more than an effort to entangle Passes and its founder, Lucy Guo, in the lawsuit,” said a company representative to Forbes.

In addition to being a business-savvy tech guru, Lucy Guo is also a girl who lives her parties. In 2022, she was described by The New York Post as Miami's number one party girl.

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Edited by Sohini Biswas