Source : THE AGE NEWS
By Emma Taggart
A 30-year-old US tech entrepreneur born to immigrant parents has unseated Taylor Swift as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.
Lucy Guo, who is worth an estimated $US1.3 billion ($2 billion) according to Forbes, told The Telegraph that her new title “doesn’t really feel like much”.
Lucy Guo has become the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire.Credit: Getty Images for Sinan Tuna
“I think that maybe reality hasn’t hit yet, right? Because most of my money is still on paper,” she said.
Guo’s wealth stems from her 5 per cent stake in Scale AI, a company she co-founded in 2016. The artificial intelligence (AI) business is currently raising money in a deal likely to value it at $US25 billion.
That valuation – and the billionaire status it has bestowed upon Guo – underlines the current AI boom, which has reinvigorated Silicon Valley and is now reshaping the world. Everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to Sir Keir Starmer have praised the potential of the technology, which is forecast to save billions but may also destroy scores of jobs.
The AI craze has caused the founders and chief executives of companies in the space to climb the world’s rich list as they cash in on soaring valuations and increasing demand for their companies’ technologies.
Guo is also an exemplar of the American dream. Born to Chinese immigrant parents, she dropped out of Carnegie Mellon University to find her fortune. Like Zuckerberg before her, the decision to ditch traditional education in favour of entrepreneurship has now paid off handsomely.
Still, it was not a decision her parents approved of at the time.
“They stopped talking to me for a while – which is fine,” she said. “I get it, because, you know, the immigrant mentality was like, ‘we sacrificed everything, we came to a new country, left all our relatives behind, to try to give our kids a better future’.
“I think they viewed it as a sign of disrespect. They’re like, ‘wow, you don’t appreciate all the sacrifices we did for you, and you don’t love us’. So they were extremely hurt.”
They have since reconciled.
Taylor Swift has been supplanted as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Credit: AP
In her first year of college, Guo took part in hackathons and coding competitions, helping her to realise that “you can just create a startup out of like, nothing”.
She was awarded a Thiel Fellowship, which provides recipients with $US200,000 over two years to support them to drop out of university and pursue other work, such as launching a startup.
The fellowship is funded by Peter Thiel, the former PayPal chief executive. Thiel, who donated $US1.25 million to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has been an enthusiastic supporter of entrepreneurship, and also co-founded Palantir, the data analytics and AI software firm now worth billions.
Guo initially tried to found a company based around people selling their home cooking to others. While the business did well financially, it faced food safety problems and ultimately failed.
After stints at Quora, the question-and-answer website, and Snapchat, Guo launched Scale AI with co-founder Alexandr Wang in 2016. The company labels the data used to develop applications for AI.
The timing was perfect: OpenAI had been founded a year earlier and uses Scale AI’s technology to help train ChatGPT, the generative AI chatbot.
OpenAI is one of the leading lights of the new AI boom and has a valuation of $US300 billion. Like Guo, its founder and boss Sam Altman is now a billionaire.
Guo got a helping hand in 2014 with a fellowship from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, which provides recipients with $US200,000 over two years to support them to drop out of university and pursue other work, such as launching a startup.Credit: Bloomberg
Guo left Scale AI only two years after helping to found it – “ultimately there was a lot of friction between me and my co-founder” – but retained her stake, a decision that helped propel her into the ranks of the world’s top 1 per cent.
“It’s not like I’m flying PJs [private jets] everywhere. Just occasionally, just when other people pay for them. I’m kidding – sometimes I pay for them,” Guo said, laughing.
After leaving Scale AI, Guo went on to set up her own venture capital fund, Backend Capital, which has so far invested in more than 100 startups. She has also run HF0, an AI business accelerator.
Guo is particularly passionate about supporting female entrepreneurs: “If you take two people that are exactly the same, male and female, they come out of MIT as engineers, I think that subconsciously every investor thinks the male is going to do better, which sucks.”
However, she is demanding of companies she backs.
“If you care about work-life balance, go work at Google, you’ll get paid a high salary and you’ll have that work-life balance,” she said. “If you’re someone that wants to build a startup, I think it’s pretty unrealistic to build a venture-funded startup with work-life balance.”
‘Number one party girl’
Guo’s work-life balance has itself been the subject of tabloid attention. After leaving Scale AI she was dubbed “Miami’s number one party girl” by the New York Post for raucous celebrations held at her multimillion-dollar flat in the city’s One Thousand Museum tower, which counts David Beckham among its residents.
One 2022 party involved a lemur and snake rented from the Zoological Wildlife Foundation, and led to the building’s homeowners’ association sending a warning letter. While she still owns her residence in Miami, Guo lives in Los Angeles.
Alongside investing, Guo has started a new business, Passes, which lets users sell access to themselves online through paid direct messages, livestreaming and subscriptions. Creators on the platform include TikTok influencer Emma Norton, actor Bella Thorne and the music producer Kygo.
It is pitched as a competitor to Patreon, a platform that lets musicians and artists sell products and services directly to fans. However, the business also occupies the same space as OnlyFans, the platform known for hosting adult videos and images, and Passes has faced claims that it knowingly distributed sexually explicit material featuring minors.
A legal complaint filed by OnlyFans model Alice Rosenblum claimed the platform produced, possessed and sold sexually explicit content featuring her when she was underage. The claims are strongly denied by the company.
A spokesman for Passes said: “This lawsuit is part of an orchestrated attempt to defame Passes and Guo, and these claims have no basis in reality. As explained in the motion to dismiss filed on April 28, Guo and Passes categorically reject the baseless allegations made against them in the lawsuit.”
Scrutiny of Passes and Guo herself is only likely to intensify following her crowning by Forbes. However, she is sceptical that she will hold on to the title of youngest self-made female billionaire for long.
“I have almost no doubt this title can be taken in three to six months,” she said, adding: “Every single time it was taken, it’s like, OK, there’s more innovation happening – women are crushing it.
“I think I’m personally excited for someone else to take that title, because that’s a sign entrepreneurship is growing.”
Telegraph, London
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