Inside the relentless life of Lucy Guo, the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire
Lucy Guo logs onto Zoom exactly on time. Not early. Not late. Precision matters when your calendar belongs to one of the world’s busiest entrepreneurs. The interview begins at 6 pm London time, 10 am in Los Angeles, where Guo lives and works, and she arrives on the screen smiling, already mid-stride in another packed day.
There is, however, room for chaos. Her two cats, Chili and Sega, woke her earlier than planned. “One was pooping very heavily. It was like a little robot going and going, so my room smelled,’” she says, laughing. The robot analogy feels oddly appropriate for someone who made her fortune in artificial intelligence.
Guo co-founded Scale AI in 2016 at just 21, helping tech companies train AI systems with high-quality data. By 30, she was a billionaire. “‘AI companies had massive amounts of money to spend on training data,’” she explains. “‘If the data says the sky is red, AI doesn’t know that that’s not true.’” She left Scale AI after two years with an estimated 5% stake, now worth around $1.2bn. “‘I wish it were liquid cash,’” she jokes.
Her days run long and fast. After a double session at Barry’s Bootcamp, Guo heads to her 25,000-square-foot office near Melrose Avenue, where she works straight through until evening. Lunch is usually Uber Eats. “‘I’ll make sure it’s an internal one so I am not judged.’” Nights are either more work or dancing with friends until 2 am. “‘My genetics mean that I don’t need to sleep that much. Thank you, Mom and Dad.”
Despite her wealth, retirement bored her. “‘I tried the whole retirement thing, and it didn’t work. The concept of an off day doesn’t make sense to me,” she says. “‘I like using my brain.’” The biggest lifestyle change? More free PR gifts. “‘I love free things. I just got four different chilli oils.’”
Her current focus is Passes, a creator-driven platform she founded in 2022. “‘We’ve created a lot of millionaires,’” she says proudly, brushing past recent controversy while staying fixed on growth.
Raised by Chinese immigrant parents who hoped she’d become a pharmacist, Guo instead studied computer science at Carnegie Mellon University before dropping out to chase startups. Stability, she admits, is what she’s sacrificed. “‘It takes a very secure person to date me,’” she says. “‘Most founders lean towards arrogance because you have to be crazy, right?’”
Still, Guo sees her pace as a privilege, not a burden. “‘I don’t understand it,’” she says of people unplugging from work. “‘What do you mean you can’t answer emails?’”
And while she holds the title of youngest self-made female billionaire, she’s eager to lose it. “‘I can’t wait for someone else to have it because that means that women are crushing it.’” The call ends. Guo is already moving on. The work never stops, and neither does she.
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