Luana Lopes Lara is a Brazilian entrepreneur and former professional ballerina who has a net worth of $2.6 billion. Luana Lopes Lara earned her fortune as the co-founder and chief operating officer of Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction market where users trade contracts tied to the outcomes of elections, sporting events, economic reports, entertainment awards, and other real-world events. She founded the company with her Massachusetts Institute of Technology classmate Tarek Mansour in 2018.

Lopes Lara has overseen much of Kalshi's product development, operations, and expansion. The company received approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to operate as a designated contract market in 2020, launched publicly in 2021, and later won a landmark legal battle that allowed it to offer contracts connected to American elections. Kalshi's popularity exploded around the 2024 presidential campaign before sports-related contracts and brokerage partnerships pushed trading volume even higher. After a series of increasingly large venture capital rounds, Kalshi reached a valuation of $22 billion in 2026. Lopes Lara reportedly owns approximately 12% of the privately held company, making her one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires and the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire.

Luana Lopes Lara was born in 1996 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She showed an early aptitude for both mathematics and the performing arts, winning medals in Brazilian mathematics and astronomy competitions while also pursuing intensive ballet training.

Lopes Lara spent approximately eight years studying at the Bolshoi Theatre School in Joinville, Brazil, the famed Russian ballet company's only school outside Russia. The program demanded long days of physical training, rehearsals, academic work, and performance preparation.

After completing her training, Lopes Lara briefly worked as a professional ballerina in Austria. She performed with the Salzburg State Theatre, including in a production of "Swan Lake." Although she had spent much of her youth preparing for a career in dance, she eventually concluded that her long-term future was in mathematics and technology.

At 18, Lopes Lara left ballet and moved to the United States to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At MIT, Lopes Lara studied computer science and became part of a close circle of students interested in mathematics, technology, markets, and quantitative finance. She graduated in 2018.

During her college summers, Lopes Lara completed internships at several major financial firms. She worked at Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates and Ken Griffin's Citadel Securities, gaining experience with the research and trading systems used by large institutional investors.

She also worked at quantitative trading firm Five Rings Capital with fellow MIT student Tarek Mansour. The two had already met at school, but their time in New York strengthened their friendship and working relationship. They frequently discussed the limitations of conventional financial products and why ordinary people had few direct ways to trade or hedge against specific real-world events.

Lopes Lara and Mansour founded Kalshi in 2018. The name comes from an Arabic word meaning "everything," reflecting their ambition to create markets around nearly every measurable future event.

On Kalshi, users can buy "yes" or "no" contracts tied to questions such as whether inflation will exceed a certain level, which political party will win an election, or whether a team will win a game. Contract prices range between one cent and 99 cents and can be interpreted as the market's estimate of an outcome's probability.

The founders believed these contracts could serve two purposes. Traders could attempt to profit from their knowledge of a subject, while individuals and businesses could use the contracts to hedge against risks not covered by traditional financial products.

Rather than launching first and dealing with regulators later, Lopes Lara and Mansour pursued federal approval before opening the platform. The process took nearly three years. In November 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission designated Kalshi as a regulated contract market, making it the first federally regulated American exchange devoted primarily to event contracts.

Kalshi launched publicly in July 2021.

Kalshi initially offered contracts involving economics, weather, entertainment, and other events, but political markets represented one of the founders' largest ambitions. The CFTC rejected the company's attempt to offer contracts based on which party would control Congress, arguing that the contracts involved gaming and raised public-interest concerns.

Kalshi sued its own regulator in 2023, an unusually aggressive move for a young financial company whose business depended on maintaining federal approval. Many of the company's investors and advisers opposed the strategy because a loss could have damaged Kalshi's entire business.

In 2024, a federal judge ruled that the CFTC had exceeded its authority when it blocked Kalshi's congressional-control contracts. After further appeals, Kalshi was allowed to open election trading during the 2024 campaign.

The victory established Kalshi as the leading regulated election prediction market in the United States. Its prices became widely cited as alternative indicators to polls and conventional forecasting models.

Kalshi's valuation increased rapidly following its election-market victory. The company raised $185 million at a $2 billion valuation in June 2025. Six months later, it raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation from investors including Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, CapitalG, ARK Invest, and Y Combinator.

In May 2026, Kalshi raised another $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation. The round was led by Coatue, with additional participation from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley, and ARK Invest.

Lopes Lara and Mansour were each estimated to own approximately 12% of Kalshi following the financing. A 12% interest in a company valued at $22 billion is worth roughly $2.64 billion.

While Mansour serves as Kalshi's chief executive and public spokesman, Lopes Lara serves as chief operating officer and concentrates heavily on the company's daily execution. Her responsibilities have included product development, compliance, hiring, internal management, and scaling the platform's operations.

The founders have maintained an unusually flat corporate structure in which much of the company reports directly to one or both of them. Mansour has described himself as focused primarily on long-term strategy, while Lopes Lara is more closely involved with translating those ideas into operating systems and finished products.