TAYLOR SWIFT IS NO LONGER THE YOUNGEST SELF-MADE BILLIONAIRE IN THE WORLD
Taylor Swift may still be the richest woman in the music business, but she was recently overthrown in another area. Since 2023, the 35-year-old singer has also been the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world; however, the distinction has since been given to another incredibly successful female leader.
According to Forbes, Swift became a billionaire by the age of 33 thanks to the money she made from her global Eras Tour and the value of her song library. Approximately $600 million of her estimated $1.6 billion net worth is thought to have come from royalties and touring, and she also owns roughly $125 million in real estate. Swift also used to have the claim to fame of being the world's youngest self-made female billionaire, which some people might reckon is priceless.
But tech tycoon Lucy Guo has now swiped that title from her, having sorted herself a bank balance similar to the world's biggest pop star three years faster than Swift, according to Forbes. The 30-year-old is a co-founder of Scale AI, a data annotation business based in California that offers labelled data for AI application training. Guo, who majored in computer science before leaving college to pursue a fellowship, founded the company in 2016 at the age of 21 alongside Alexandr Wang, who was 19 at the time.
She oversaw the San Francisco company's operations and product design teams, and Wang served as CEO. Two years later, the two of them were listed in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list. Following a rumored argument with Wang about how Scale AI was being operated, Guo subsequently quit the company, saying in a statement:"We had a difference of opinion but I am proud of what Scale AI has accomplished."
She kept hold of her stake in the business though, which is believed to be around five percent - and thanks to a deal which is currently being wrapped up, the value of this slice has boomed. Scale AI is finalizing an offer which allows early employees and investors in the nine-year-old company to sell shares to new or returning investors, Forbes says.
When it's finished on June 1st, the company's worth is expected to soar to a staggering $25 billion, an astounding 80 percent increase over this time last year. Forbes predicts that the entrepreneur's stake would now soar to $1.2 billion as a result of everything, enabling her to unseat Swift from the top spot. It is estimated that Guo's entire net worth, including her ownership of her second startup company, Passes, will be $1.25 billion. She now belongs to an exclusive group of women who have transformed themselves into billionaires before turning forty, something that just six other women on the earth do.
Guo previously revealed she had an 'incredibly frugal' upbringing, telling Fortune that she continued to 'live cheaply' well into her adult life until she had 'made her first $10million'. She reckons that's the best way to be, as she explained in 2023: "Be frugal and always live below your means.
