Lucy Guo: who is she? Career, Scale AI, Passes and net worth

Lucy Guo is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Scale AI in 2016 and founded the creator platform Passes in 2022. She also launched the Backend Capital fund. Forbes puts her net worth at $1.5 billion on October 23, 2026, mostly from her stake in Scale AI. Passes presents her as its CEO (press release of April 22, 2026).

At a glance

• Scale AI: co-founded in 2016 with Alexandr Wang, left by Lucy Guo in 2018. Forbes credits her with about 3% of the capital.
• Passes: founded in 2022. $40M Series A announced on February 28, 2024, led by Bond Capital.
• Backend Capital: seed-stage fund created after she left Scale AI.
• Net worth: $1.5B according to Forbes on October 23, 2026, 2,681st in the world.
• Title: youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world according to Forbes, from April to December 2025.
• Passes leadership: presented as CEO by Passes (April 22, 2026) and by Forbes (October 23, 2026).

Lucy Guo in 10 dates

From Carnegie Mellon to Scale AI (2014-2018)

Lucy Guo studied computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. She left the university in 2014 to become a Thiel Fellow (biography published by Yale in 2021; Forbes). The Thiel Fellowship is a two-year program created in 2011 by Peter Thiel for young people who want to build new things and who skip or stop out of college.

The biography published by Yale mentions a software engineering internship at Facebook, a product designer role at Snapchat (the first woman in that role, according to this biography) and a stint at Quora. Wikipedia repeats the Facebook internship and the Snapchat role.

Scale AI was founded in 2016 with Alexandr Wang. Forbes describes it as a data labeling company for AI, and the Y Combinator website places it in the Summer 2016 batch. Lucy Guo left the company in 2018. The media describe that departure in different ways: Forbes mentions a falling out with her co-founder, the Los Angeles Business Journal a disagreement over strategy, and Wikipedia (citing The Information) a dismissal. She kept a stake.

Scale AI: valuations and Lucy Guo’s stake

Backend Capital: the seed-stage fund

After Scale AI, Lucy Guo co-founded Backend Capital, a venture capital fund that mostly finances engineers and early-stage start-ups (Fortune, December 17, 2024). Fortune names Ramp among the unicorns the fund has invested in. The Yale biography (2021) presents her as leading the fund’s seed and pre-seed deals.

Passes: the creator platform (2022-2026)

According to the Passes website, consulted on October 23, 2026, creators keep up to 90% of their revenue and the platform takes 10%. Revenue comes from subscriptions, paid direct messages, one-on-one calls, livestreams and product sales. The site claims more than 10,000 creators, more than 1.5 million fans and nine-figure payouts. These are the company’s own figures, with no measurement date. Funding totals vary by outlet: $50 million for Forbes, more than $65 million for the Los Angeles Business Journal in May 2025.

Lucy Guo’s net worth: amounts, sources and dates

Forbes lists her wealth under “artificial intelligence” and says most of it comes from her stake in Scale AI. This real-time profile changes every day. In April 2025, Fortune wrote that she took the title of world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire from Taylor Swift. According to Forbes, she kept it until December 2025, when Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of Kalshi, took it from her (Forbes, Complex).

Lucy Guo news as of October 23, 2026

Present an app or a brand

Are you preparing the launch of an app, a platform or a brand? These resources help you create screen mockups and logo elements. They have no link with Lucy Guo, Scale AI or Passes.

• +42 IPHONE 16 PRO MOCKUPS PACK (.PSD) : 42 iPhone 16 Pro mockups for Photoshop, in .PSD format.
• 36 formes vectorielles technologiques [By Vanzyst] : 36 vector design shapes with editable outlines, as AI, EPS and SVG files, with an ABR brush library and a PDF.
• +130 Formes Abstraites Vectorisés pour Logos [BY ZÜLI] : a pack of 130 abstract shapes for creating logos, as PNG and vector files.

The whole brand identity resources collection.

Read next

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• Alex Masmej’s story: from creator token to Showtime and Drakula
• 30 influential entrepreneurs: companies, key dates and where they stand now
• AI as a catalyst for change in the business world

Sources

• Forbes, profil de Lucy Guo (23 octobre 2026, temps réel)
• Fortune, Lucy Guo, plus jeune milliardaire autodidacte (18 avril 2025)
• Fortune Europe, entretien avec Lucy Guo (17 décembre 2024)
• Fortune, Lucy Guo sur l’IA et le travail (19 septembre 2026)
• TechCrunch, Scale AI et l’investissement de Meta (13 juin 2025)
• Y Combinator, page de Scale AI
• Thiel Fellowship, présentation du programme
• Université Yale, biographie de Lucy Guo (événement du 1er décembre 2021)
• Los Angeles Business Journal, LA500 2026 : Lucy Guo (11 mai 2026)
• Los Angeles Business Journal, entretien avec Lucy Guo (26 mai 2025)
• Wikipédia, Lucy Guo
• Passes, site officiel (consulté le 23 octobre 2026)
• Passes, annonce de la série A de 40 M$ (28 février 2024)
• Passes, communiqué du 22 avril 2026 (PR Newswire, repris par Yahoo Finance)
• TechCrunch, Passes rachète Fanhouse (14 juillet 2023)
• Digital Music News, Passes et Fanhouse (17 juillet 2023)
• Complex, Luana Lopes Lara, plus jeune milliardaire autodidacte (4 décembre 2025)
• Forbes Australie, relais d’un article Forbes de décembre 2025

Updated October 23, 2026. Net worth: Forbes (October 23, 2026). News: Fortune (September 19, 2026).