Taylor Swift has been dethroned as the world's youngest self-made female billionaire, according to Forbes. The pop star has been taken over by a 30-year-old former college dropout known for her wild partying lifestyle, who has reaped a windfall from the artificial intelligence boom.
Lucy Guo — who describes herself as a workaholic and is often seen commuting to office on an electric skateboard when not being chauffeured by an assistant — now has an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion, according to Forbes' newly released list of America's Richest Self-Made Women on Wednesday. Guo claimed the title of the world's youngest self-made female billionaire back in April, surpassing the pop diva.
Work Hard, Party Harder
Guo took over the title of the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire after news broke that Scale AI — the company she co-founded with Alexandr Wang in 2016, when she was 21 and he was 19 — was valued at $25 billion in a deal expected to be finalized by June 1.
Although the tender offer hasn't been completed yet, a source with knowledge of the matter told The New York Post that it's expected to close at that valuation within the next few weeks.
Guo, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and began learning to code while still in middle school. She left Carnegie Mellon University after earning a $100,000 entrepreneurial fellowship funded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel.
In 2015, she joined Quora, where she met Alexandr Wang, and later had a short stint at Snapchat, becoming the company's first female designer.
At Scale AI, Guo was in charge of the operations and production design teams — but her time there ended after a reported clash with Wang, who was the CEO and ultimately fired her following disagreements about the company's direction.
"We had a difference of opinion but I am proud of what Scale AI has accomplished," Guo told the tech news site The Information last year.
Despite her departure, Guo retained most of her 5% stake in Scale AI, a stake now valued at around $1.2 billion, according to Forbes. The company provides data labeling services for major tech firms like OpenAI and Alphabet to help train their AI chatbots.
Guo lives a lavish lifestyle, with a luxury apartment in Miami and a home in Los Angeles. She openly admits to never cooking or shopping for groceries, opting instead to order all her meals through Uber Eats.
Even while on vacation, she claims to work at least eight hours a day and has bragged about doing two Barry's Bootcamp fitness classes daily. She's also a regular at techno rave parties.
"A lot of people don't like me because, honestly, I seem like an a–hole online. I would not like me on the internet," she told The Post in 2022. "But I've made a lot of friends because I think people appreciate my savage personality."
New Venture with New Dreams
Guo now heads Passes, a content creation platform described as a more family-friendly alternative to OnlyFans and Patreon. The platform claims to help creators become millionaires by letting them keep 90% of their earnings.
According to Fortune, Passes raised $40 million in a Series A funding round last year, which has helped finance Guo's extravagant, party-filled lifestyle.
However, both Guo and Passes are now facing serious allegations. A class action lawsuit filed in February accuses the platform of allowing child pornography.
The lawsuit specifically names Alec Celestin, an agent for Passes, and Lani Ginoza, the platform's director of talent, alleging they knowingly allowed sexually explicit content involving OnlyFans model Alice Rosenblum — who was underage at the time — to be shared on the site.
"Guo personally intervened to override Passes' strict internal safety controls tailored for creators of social media content aged between 15 and 17 years old to strip and deprive Plaintiff of any protections offered by Passes against the exploitation of a minor," the complaint alleged.
Just before the lawsuit was filed, Passes removed all content from underage creators and banned them from the platform entirely, according to Forbes.
In April, Guo's legal team filed a motion to have the case dismissed, calling it a defamatory effort to target "the deep pockets" of Passes — a thriving startup — and its wealthy founder.
In between founding Scale AI and Passes, Guo founded a modest investment firm called Backend Capital.
She ranked 26th on Forbes' list of America's Richest Self-Made Women, while Swift secured the 21st spot.
