It’s over for Taylor! 30-year-old techie becomes youngest billionaire woman: What’s her connection to OYO Room founder Ritesh Agarwal?

Transfer over, Taylor Swift! The pop diva has been dethroned from her standing because the youngest self-made billionaire lady by a 30-year-old serial entrepreneur named Lucy Guo. As per a Forbes report, this milestone aligns with a serious monetary improvement at her earlier startup, Scale AI. The bogus intelligence powerhouse is approaching the finalization of a young provide scheduled for June 1.

This deal gives early workers and preliminary backers the chance to money out a few of their holdings, valuing the nine-year-old enterprise at a powerful $25 billion—an 80% leap from its $13.8 billion valuation recorded solely a 12 months in the past in Might.

Scale AI, which Guo co-founded in 2016, operates behind the scenes of the AI industry, specializing within the annotation and group of knowledge used to develop machine studying fashions. It’s usually likened to offering the “picks and shovels” of the AI growth. Its high-profile clientele consists of the U.S. federal authorities and main AI analysis agency OpenAI.

Guo’s ascent mirrors the quintessential Silicon Valley narrative. A primary-generation Chinese language-American, she grew up within the tech-centric Bay Space and commenced programming whereas nonetheless in center faculty, in accordance with Forbes. She briefly attended Carnegie Mellon College earlier than dropping out to just accept the Thiel Fellowship—a program created by tech billionaire Peter Thiel that grants $100,000 to bold younger entrepreneurs keen to skip or go away school.

Her early skilled journey included a stint at Quora, the place she crossed paths along with her eventual Scale AI co-founder, Alexandr Wang. A brief-lived position at Snapchat adopted earlier than the duo launched Scale AI in 2016. Guo ultimately stepped away from Scale to department out into new enterprise endeavors. She based Backend Capital, a enterprise capital agency, and made early investments in high-growth startups like Ramp, which have since reached billion-dollar valuations.

In 2022, she launched Passes, a digital content material platform providing subscription-based providers much like OnlyFans and Patreon. The platform has drawn celebrities reminiscent of gymnast Olivia Dunne, NBA icon Shaquille O’Neal, and music producer Kygo. Over three years, Passes efficiently raised $50 million in funding and is presently valued at $150 million.India’s Ritesh Agarwal shares an identical path. Additionally a Thiel Fellow, he created Oravel Stays in 2012—a low-cost lodging portal that developed into OYO in 2013. That very same 12 months, he was awarded the Thiel Fellowship’s $100,000 grant. In 2016, OYO absorbed the workforce behind Qlik Move to boost its knowledge science capabilities. As of 2025, OYO’s valuation exceeds $4 billion.