Luana Lopes Lara debuts as a Forbes billionaire with R$ 13,4 billion.
Brazilian Luana Lopes Lara, 30, debuts on Forbes Brazil's 2026 list of billionaires with an estimated net worth of R$ 13,4 billion. Co-founder of Kalshi, an American market prediction platform, she is among the rare names on the ranking who built their fortune without inheritance.
According to Globo Online, in December 2025, at the age of 29, Luana became the youngest woman in the world to achieve billionaire status through her own work, according to Forbes. The publication points out that her fortune was amassed in just over five years.
A journey between ballet and finance.
Born in Belo Horizonte in 1996, the daughter of a mathematics teacher and an engineer, Luana grew up between Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and Santa Catarina. In Joinville, she studied at the only Bolshoi Theatre School outside of Russia. During high school, she combined classes with extensive training in classical ballet and, later, performed professionally at the Salzburg State Theatre in Austria.
Alongside her dance career, she won medals in mathematics and astronomy olympiads. She enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she graduated in engineering, and completed internships at companies in the American financial market, including Bridgewater, managed by Ray Dalio, and Citadel, managed by Ken Griffin.
The creation of Kalshi
After her experience in the quantitative market, Luana left the field to dedicate herself to forecasting markets, a then nascent segment. Her partner in the venture was Lebanese national Tarek Mansour, a colleague from MIT. According to the company itself, the idea arose in 2018, during a walk back from work, when the two were interning together in New York.
Kalshi allows users to trade contracts linked to the probability of certain events. The model differs from traditional variable income; instead of buying stocks, the user trades contracts that represent the possibility of an event occurring. When the predicted outcome is confirmed, each contract pays US$1; if the event does not occur as predicted, there is no return. Available themes include elections, Federal Reserve decisions, weather, sports, and awards.
Regulatory dispute and the electoral market
The platform received authorization from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the American body that regulates derivatives, in 2020, after more than three years of trading. In 2023, the CFTC banned election-related contracts, considering them similar to gambling, but a court decision later overturned the ban.
Kalshi began offering contracts based on the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election, the first legal authorization of its kind in the United States in over a century. During the contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in November of that year, the platform generated over US$500 million in transactions.
The leap in assets
Luana's impressive net worth increased dramatically in December 2025, when Kalshi raised US$1 billion in an investment round that valued the company at US$11 billion. At the time, she and Mansour each held approximately 12% of the company, resulting in an estimated net worth of US$1,3 billion each.
In the 2026 Brazilian edition of Forbes, Luana's fortune is listed as R$ 13,4 billion. The publication highlights that she meets two criteria for the ranking: she is among the youngest billionaires in the country and built her wealth entirely through her own work.
