Luana Lopes Lara: The dancer who used prediction markets to earn a billion dollars

Luana Lopes Lara trained at the Bolshoi, but she gave up ballet to pursue her dream of starting a prediction market company

According to James Mackreides, that action was very profitable.

This year's surge in prediction markets has made it, along with AI, one of the few sectors where "young founders can become paper billionaires practically overnight," according to Bloomberg. The two 29-year-olds behind Kalshi Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, who met as MIT undergraduates, are in the lead. Their backgrounds are both intriguing. Lopes Lara trained at the Bolshoi and became a ballerina in her home country of Brazil before relocating to the United States, whereas Mansour was raised in Lebanon and had early aspirations of becoming a competitive skier. She became one of the youngest self-made billionaires among women this year.

Undoubtedly, Kalshi's performance was impressive. The startup, which offers bets on everything from elections to pop culture events, grew slowly over the course of six years, raising roughly £100 million in small funding rounds. However, since June, as outside investors have poured in, its valuation has skyrocketed by about 450 percent, reaching £11 billion.

It's easy to gauge the attraction. Prediction markets, which were once primarily of interest to "quantitative political scientists," have quickly developed from their "quirky origins" to become "marketplaces for almost anything," according to the Financial Times. This has been made possible by some timely approvals from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and strong ties to the new administration. Donald Trump Jr. became a strategic advisor to Kalshis in January. He also became a board member and made an investment in Polymarket, its fiercest rival, in August. When combined, these businesses rule this most popular industry.

The 2024 presidential election was the event that made Kalshi famous. After fighting a lawsuit to become the first business to offer legitimate election contracts, it outperformed conventional pollsters by accurately predicting Donald Trump would win.

However, a significant move into sports betting this yeara massive but still developing US market where Kalshi is proving to be just as disruptive to established playershas really gotten things going. It is expected to grow into "a sports-gambling behemoth" according to investors. However, Matt Zhang of Hivemind Capital claims that practically any event has the potential to be profitable. The news is a massive, liquid asset class, as these prediction markets have realized. The "

Alex Immerman, a partner at VC behemoth Andreessen Horowitz, told Forbes, "There are few better trainings for being told no and pushing through anyway than being a professional ballerina." Lopes Lara "carried that same calm confidence into building Kalshi, having learned persistence with grace early on." She worked as a professional ballerina in Austria for nine months after graduating from the Bolshoi, "before hanging up her pointe shoes" and going to MIT to pursue a computer science degree.

Lopes Lara worked as an intern at Ken Griffins Citadel Securities and Ray Dalios Bridgewater Associates during the summers. However, her entrepreneurial career began with a growing friendship with classmate Tarek Mansour. After they grew close, "the idea of a prediction market business just clicked" one evening, according to Forbes.

According to The New York Post, the two worked on "building the company, fighting for federal regulation approval and getting early backing from significant players, such as Charles Schwab and Sequoia Capital" during the pandemic. It was a wise gamble. She and Mansour are now valued at £1.3 billion each after keeping a 12% share in Kalshi.

Kalshi, played by Luana Lopes Lara, will face many challenges.

Perhaps the biggest battles are still to come. The year ended with a "significant" legal setback, according to the ft\., and Kalshi is facing a significant pushback against its sports-betting ambitions in addition to growing competition from Polymarket and other contenders. However, the fight will continue state by state and may ultimately reach the Supreme Court. Lopes Lara will require all of her renowned endurance.