Artificial intelligence company Scale AI is finalizing a tender offer that will allow employees and early investors in the nine-year-old private company to sell shares to new or returning investors. The deal (which a source said will “go forward unless the sky falls” and is expected to close by June 2025) values ​​Scale AI at $25 billion. The new valuation makes Scale AI co-founder Lucy Guo the youngest self-made female billionaire on the planet. Born on October 14, 1994, Guo dethroned pop star Taylor Swift, 35, who has held the title since Forbes declared her a billionaire in late 2023.

Guo, a computer science dropout, co-founded artificial intelligence company Scale AI in 2016 — when she was 21 — with Alexandr Wang, then 19. Wang became CEO, while Guo ran the product design and operations teams at the San Francisco startup. Both co-founders made Forbes' 2018 Under 30 list. That same year, they disagreed about how the company was being run, and Wang reportedly fired Guo. "We had different views, but I'm proud of what Scale AI has achieved," Guo said in a statement.

After leaving Scale AI, she wisely kept most of her stake in her old company while she pursued her next startup. Guo still owns an estimated stake worth nearly $1.2 billion. Add in her other assets—including her stake in her second startup, Passes—and Guo has a net worth of $1.25 billion, according to Forbes. “I don’t really think much about it, it’s a bit wild. Too bad it’s all just on paper! Haha,” Guo texted in response to her new billionaire status.

Guo is one of only six self-made female billionaires in the world under the age of 40. She is also the only one who made most of her fortune from a company she left many years ago.

The son of Chinese immigrant parents, Guo grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and started coding in high school. She studied computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University but dropped out before graduating to become a Thiel Fellow — a program funded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel that pays college students with entrepreneurial spirit. In 2015, Guo landed a job as a product designer at question-and-answer company Quora, where she met Wang. She left Quora and briefly worked as a product designer at Snapchat before she and Wang decided to co-found Scale AI in 2016.

After Guo left Scale, she founded a small venture capital firm called Backend Capital to invest in early-stage companies. One of the firm’s best investments: a six-figure bet in 2020 on financial software company Ramp — a company now valued at $13 billion, with all three of its co-founders now billionaires.

Source: https://phunuvietnam.vn/chuyen-gia-ai-vua-danh-bai-taylor-swift-de-tro-thanh-nu-ty-phu-tu-than-tre-nhat-the-gioi-20250428202757899.htm