Taylor Swift unseated as world's youngest self-made female billionaire by Lucy Guo, a hard-partying, 30-year-old college dropout
Taylor Swift has been dethroned as the world's youngest self-made female billionaire, according to Forbes — by a 30-year-old, hard-partying college dropout who has reaped a windfall from the artificial intelligence boom.
Lucy Guo — a self-professed workaholic who rides an electric skateboard to work when she's not being chauffeured by an assistant — has a net worth of $1.3 billion, according to Forbes' list of America's Richest Self-Made Women released Wednesday.
Guo took Swift's title of world's youngest self-made woman billionaire in April, when it was reported that Scale AI — the firm she co-founded with Alexandr Wang in 2016 when she was just 21 and he was 19 — had been valued at $25 billion in a deal set to close by June 1.
The tender offer has not been finalized yet, but it is expected to close at that valuation in a few weeks, a source familiar with the matter told The Post.
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Guo was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she quickly picked up coding in middle school. She dropped out of Carnegie Mellon University as she clinched a $100,000 entrepreneurial scholarship bankrolled by billionaire investor Peter Thiel.
She took a job in 2015 at Quora, where she met Wang, and later worked at Snapchat for a brief period as the company's first female designer.
At Scale AI, Guo ran the operations and production design teams — until Wang, who took the chief executive position, reportedly fired her after the two sparred over how the company should be run.
'We had a difference of opinion but I am proud of what Scale AI has accomplished,' Guo told the tech news site the Information last year.
Still, Guo kept most of her 5% stake in Scale AI, which is worth approximately $1.2 billion, according to Forbes. The firm labels data used by tech giants like OpenAI and Alphabet to train their chatbots.
With 'a swanky apartment in Miami' and a house in Los Angeles, Guo has admitted she never buys groceries or cooks, instead ordering all her meals from Uber Eats.
She says she works at least eight hours a day when on vacation and has boasted about taking two Barry's bootcamp fitness classes a day. She frequently attends techno raves.
'A lot of people don't like me because, honestly, I seem like an a****** online. I would not like me on the internet,' she told The Post in 2022. 'But I've made a lot of friends because I think people appreciate my savage personality.'
The Post previously reported on her massive collection of Pokemon paraphernalia — including slippers, stuffed animals, artwork and a Swarovski crystal necklace.
She now runs Passes, a content creation platform that has been dubbed the family-friendly version of OnlyFans, and Patreon, claiming to 'make millionaires' by allowing creators to hold onto 90% of their earnings.
Passes reaped $40 million last year in a Series A funding round, according to Fortune — allowing Guo to fund her lavish party-girl lifestyle.
But now Passes and Guo are facing allegations, in a class-action suit filed in February, that the platform allowed child pornography.
The bombshell suit accuses Alec Celestin, the plaintiff's agent, and Lani Ginoza, the site's director of talent, of knowingly allowing sexually explicit content featuring OnlyFans model Alice Rosenblum — who was underage at the time — to circulate on Passes. Ginoza was not employed by Passes at the time of the alleged events, according to Passes and the site's legal representation.
'Guo personally intervened to override Passes' strict internal safety controls tailored for creators of social media content aged between 15 and 17 years old to strip and deprive Plaintiff of any protections offered by Passes against the exploitation of a minor,' the complaint alleged.
Just before the suit was filed, Passes banned all underage creators and wiped the site of their content, according to Forbes.
Lawyers for Guo filed a motion in April to dismiss the suit, which they slammed as a defamatory attempt to 'pursue the 'deep pockets' of Passes, a successful startup, and its wealthy founder.'
'This lawsuit is part of an orchestrated attempt to defame Passes and Ms. Guo, and these claims have no basis in reality,' Rollo Baker of Elsberg Baker & Maruri told The Post.
'Ms. Guo and Passes categorically reject the baseless allegations made against them in the lawsuit, which was only filed against them after they rejected a $15 million payment demand.'
In between founding Scale AI and Passes, Guo started a small investment firm known as Backend Capital.
Guo landed at No. 26 on Forbes' list of America's Richest Self-Made Women, while Swift came in at spot 21.
Swift still holds the title of world's richest female musician with a net worth of $1.6 billion, after her blowout-success international Eras Tour pushed her into billionaire status in October 2023.
Diane Hendricks took the top spot, with a $22.3 billion net worth thanks to her company ABC Supply, one of the largest distributors of roofing, siding and windows in the country.
Originally published as Taylor Swift unseated as world's youngest self-made female billionaire by Lucy Guo, a hard-partying, 30-year-old college dropout
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The S&P 500 posted 10 new 52-week highs and one new low while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 63 new highs and 27 new lows. Wall Street's main indexes are mixed as investors watch a fresh round of US-China negotiations aimed at mending a trade rift that has rattled financial markets for much of the year. Top officials from both countries have kicked off discussions at London's Lancaster House, looking to address disagreements around a preliminary trade agreement struck last month that had briefly cooled tensions between the world's largest economies. The meeting, which could run into Tuesday, comes four days after US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke by phone, their first direct interaction since Trump's January 20 inauguration. The leaders had, however, left key issues unresolved. "The talks will have to go on for some time before we decide whether or not there's actual progress being made. However, most investors remain hopeful that there will be some positive results," said Peter Andersen, founder at Andersen Capital Management. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNBC in an interview on Monday the US trade negotiators are seeking a handshake in London to seal an agreement struck by Trump and Xi to allow the export of China's rare earth minerals and magnets to the United States. Hopes of more trade deals between the US and its major trading partners, along with upbeat earnings and tame inflation data, helped US equities rally in May, with the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq notching their best monthly gains since November 2023. The S&P 500 remains a little more than 2.0 per cent below all-time highs touched in February while the Nasdaq is about 3.0 per cent below its record peaks reached in December. Major data releases this week include readings on May consumer prices and initial jobless claims. 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US and Chinese officials meet in the UK for trade talks
Top US and Chinese officials are meeting in London to try to defuse a high-stakes trade dispute that has widened beyond tit-for-tat tariffs to restrictions over rare earths, threatening to cripple supply chains and slow global growth. Officials from the two superpowers were meeting at the ornate Lancaster House to try to get back on track with a preliminary agreement struck last month in Geneva that had briefly lowered the temperature between the United States and China. Since then the US has accused China of slow-walking on its commitments, particularly around rare earths shipments. US economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Monday that the US team wanted a handshake from China on rare earths after Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping spoke last week. "The purpose of the meeting today is to make sure that they're serious, but to literally get handshakes," Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told CNBC in an interview. He said the expectation was that immediately after the handshake, export controls would be eased and rare earths released in volume. The talks, which could run into Tuesday, come at a crucial time for both economies, with investors looking for relief from Trump's cascade of tariff orders since his return to the White House in January. China's export growth slowed to a three-month low in May while its factory-gate deflation deepened to its worst level in two years. In the US, the trade war has put a huge dent in business and household confidence, and first-quarter gross domestic product contracted due to a record surge in imports as people front-loaded purchases to beat anticipated price increases. But for now, the effect on inflation has been muted, and the jobs market has remained fairly resilient, although economists expect cracks to become more apparent over the northern hemisphere summer. Attending the talks in London will be US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and a Chinese contingent helmed by Vice Premier He Lifeng. The inclusion of Lutnick, whose agency oversees export controls for the US, is one indication of how central rare earths have become. China holds a near-monopoly on rare earth magnets, a crucial component in electric vehicle motors. Lutnick did not attend the Geneva talks at which the countries struck a 90-day deal to roll back some of the triple-digit tariffs they had placed on each other. The second round of meetings comes four days after Trump and Xi spoke by phone, their first direct interaction since Trump's January 20 inauguration. During the more than one-hour-long call, Xi told Trump to back down from trade measures that roiled the global economy and warned him against threatening steps on Taiwan, according to a Chinese government summary. But Trump said on social media the talks focused primarily on trade led to "a very positive conclusion," setting the stage for Monday's meeting in London. The next day, Trump said Xi had agreed to resume shipments to the US of rare earths minerals and magnets and Reuters reported on Friday that China has granted temporary export licences to rare-earth suppliers of the top three US car makers. China's decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets upended the supply chains central to car makers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Sunday that the US wanted the two sides to build on the progress made in Geneva in the hope they could move towards more comprehensive trade talks. While the UK government will provide a venue for Monday's discussions, it will not be party to them and will have separate talks later in the week with the Chinese delegation. The US dollar slipped against all major currencies on Monday as investors waited for news, while oil prices were little changed. Top US and Chinese officials are meeting in London to try to defuse a high-stakes trade dispute that has widened beyond tit-for-tat tariffs to restrictions over rare earths, threatening to cripple supply chains and slow global growth. Officials from the two superpowers were meeting at the ornate Lancaster House to try to get back on track with a preliminary agreement struck last month in Geneva that had briefly lowered the temperature between the United States and China. Since then the US has accused China of slow-walking on its commitments, particularly around rare earths shipments. US economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Monday that the US team wanted a handshake from China on rare earths after Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping spoke last week. "The purpose of the meeting today is to make sure that they're serious, but to literally get handshakes," Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told CNBC in an interview. He said the expectation was that immediately after the handshake, export controls would be eased and rare earths released in volume. The talks, which could run into Tuesday, come at a crucial time for both economies, with investors looking for relief from Trump's cascade of tariff orders since his return to the White House in January. China's export growth slowed to a three-month low in May while its factory-gate deflation deepened to its worst level in two years. In the US, the trade war has put a huge dent in business and household confidence, and first-quarter gross domestic product contracted due to a record surge in imports as people front-loaded purchases to beat anticipated price increases. But for now, the effect on inflation has been muted, and the jobs market has remained fairly resilient, although economists expect cracks to become more apparent over the northern hemisphere summer. Attending the talks in London will be US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and a Chinese contingent helmed by Vice Premier He Lifeng. The inclusion of Lutnick, whose agency oversees export controls for the US, is one indication of how central rare earths have become. China holds a near-monopoly on rare earth magnets, a crucial component in electric vehicle motors. Lutnick did not attend the Geneva talks at which the countries struck a 90-day deal to roll back some of the triple-digit tariffs they had placed on each other. The second round of meetings comes four days after Trump and Xi spoke by phone, their first direct interaction since Trump's January 20 inauguration. During the more than one-hour-long call, Xi told Trump to back down from trade measures that roiled the global economy and warned him against threatening steps on Taiwan, according to a Chinese government summary. But Trump said on social media the talks focused primarily on trade led to "a very positive conclusion," setting the stage for Monday's meeting in London. The next day, Trump said Xi had agreed to resume shipments to the US of rare earths minerals and magnets and Reuters reported on Friday that China has granted temporary export licences to rare-earth suppliers of the top three US car makers. China's decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets upended the supply chains central to car makers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Sunday that the US wanted the two sides to build on the progress made in Geneva in the hope they could move towards more comprehensive trade talks. While the UK government will provide a venue for Monday's discussions, it will not be party to them and will have separate talks later in the week with the Chinese delegation. The US dollar slipped against all major currencies on Monday as investors waited for news, while oil prices were little changed. Top US and Chinese officials are meeting in London to try to defuse a high-stakes trade dispute that has widened beyond tit-for-tat tariffs to restrictions over rare earths, threatening to cripple supply chains and slow global growth. Officials from the two superpowers were meeting at the ornate Lancaster House to try to get back on track with a preliminary agreement struck last month in Geneva that had briefly lowered the temperature between the United States and China. Since then the US has accused China of slow-walking on its commitments, particularly around rare earths shipments. US economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Monday that the US team wanted a handshake from China on rare earths after Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping spoke last week. "The purpose of the meeting today is to make sure that they're serious, but to literally get handshakes," Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told CNBC in an interview. He said the expectation was that immediately after the handshake, export controls would be eased and rare earths released in volume. The talks, which could run into Tuesday, come at a crucial time for both economies, with investors looking for relief from Trump's cascade of tariff orders since his return to the White House in January. China's export growth slowed to a three-month low in May while its factory-gate deflation deepened to its worst level in two years. In the US, the trade war has put a huge dent in business and household confidence, and first-quarter gross domestic product contracted due to a record surge in imports as people front-loaded purchases to beat anticipated price increases. But for now, the effect on inflation has been muted, and the jobs market has remained fairly resilient, although economists expect cracks to become more apparent over the northern hemisphere summer. Attending the talks in London will be US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and a Chinese contingent helmed by Vice Premier He Lifeng. The inclusion of Lutnick, whose agency oversees export controls for the US, is one indication of how central rare earths have become. China holds a near-monopoly on rare earth magnets, a crucial component in electric vehicle motors. Lutnick did not attend the Geneva talks at which the countries struck a 90-day deal to roll back some of the triple-digit tariffs they had placed on each other. The second round of meetings comes four days after Trump and Xi spoke by phone, their first direct interaction since Trump's January 20 inauguration. During the more than one-hour-long call, Xi told Trump to back down from trade measures that roiled the global economy and warned him against threatening steps on Taiwan, according to a Chinese government summary. But Trump said on social media the talks focused primarily on trade led to "a very positive conclusion," setting the stage for Monday's meeting in London. The next day, Trump said Xi had agreed to resume shipments to the US of rare earths minerals and magnets and Reuters reported on Friday that China has granted temporary export licences to rare-earth suppliers of the top three US car makers. China's decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets upended the supply chains central to car makers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Sunday that the US wanted the two sides to build on the progress made in Geneva in the hope they could move towards more comprehensive trade talks. While the UK government will provide a venue for Monday's discussions, it will not be party to them and will have separate talks later in the week with the Chinese delegation. The US dollar slipped against all major currencies on Monday as investors waited for news, while oil prices were little changed. Top US and Chinese officials are meeting in London to try to defuse a high-stakes trade dispute that has widened beyond tit-for-tat tariffs to restrictions over rare earths, threatening to cripple supply chains and slow global growth. Officials from the two superpowers were meeting at the ornate Lancaster House to try to get back on track with a preliminary agreement struck last month in Geneva that had briefly lowered the temperature between the United States and China. Since then the US has accused China of slow-walking on its commitments, particularly around rare earths shipments. US economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Monday that the US team wanted a handshake from China on rare earths after Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping spoke last week. "The purpose of the meeting today is to make sure that they're serious, but to literally get handshakes," Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told CNBC in an interview. He said the expectation was that immediately after the handshake, export controls would be eased and rare earths released in volume. The talks, which could run into Tuesday, come at a crucial time for both economies, with investors looking for relief from Trump's cascade of tariff orders since his return to the White House in January. China's export growth slowed to a three-month low in May while its factory-gate deflation deepened to its worst level in two years. In the US, the trade war has put a huge dent in business and household confidence, and first-quarter gross domestic product contracted due to a record surge in imports as people front-loaded purchases to beat anticipated price increases. But for now, the effect on inflation has been muted, and the jobs market has remained fairly resilient, although economists expect cracks to become more apparent over the northern hemisphere summer. Attending the talks in London will be US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and a Chinese contingent helmed by Vice Premier He Lifeng. The inclusion of Lutnick, whose agency oversees export controls for the US, is one indication of how central rare earths have become. China holds a near-monopoly on rare earth magnets, a crucial component in electric vehicle motors. Lutnick did not attend the Geneva talks at which the countries struck a 90-day deal to roll back some of the triple-digit tariffs they had placed on each other. The second round of meetings comes four days after Trump and Xi spoke by phone, their first direct interaction since Trump's January 20 inauguration. During the more than one-hour-long call, Xi told Trump to back down from trade measures that roiled the global economy and warned him against threatening steps on Taiwan, according to a Chinese government summary. But Trump said on social media the talks focused primarily on trade led to "a very positive conclusion," setting the stage for Monday's meeting in London. The next day, Trump said Xi had agreed to resume shipments to the US of rare earths minerals and magnets and Reuters reported on Friday that China has granted temporary export licences to rare-earth suppliers of the top three US car makers. China's decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets upended the supply chains central to car makers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Sunday that the US wanted the two sides to build on the progress made in Geneva in the hope they could move towards more comprehensive trade talks. While the UK government will provide a venue for Monday's discussions, it will not be party to them and will have separate talks later in the week with the Chinese delegation. The US dollar slipped against all major currencies on Monday as investors waited for news, while oil prices were little changed.
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
‘Prisoner's dilemma': How China is using the West to try and rule the skies
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The people who are most willing to talk about China's aggressive technology acquisition are not COMAC or Boeing, but the people concerned about the relative power of democracies in the face of China. Emily de La Bruyère, a senior fellow at the US-based Foundation for Defence of Democracies, believes Western aerospace companies are mistaken for partnering with China in their commercial aerospace programs. They are 'incredibly short-termist and blind for ignoring the consequences of their action', de La Bruyère told this masthead. (Airbus rejects the claim of being 'short-term' focused, pointing to its history in China dating back to 1994.) De La Bruyère believes Western aerospace companies face a 'prisoner's dilemma' in China. If any single aerospace company pulls out of China over intellectual property theft fears, they will get punished financially, she says. But their individual action won't stop the larger trend of China's forced technology transfers, industrial espionage and hacking. So the Western companies are 'sowing the seeds of China destroying their [the companies'] markets all over the world for the sake of what is a very short window of access to the Chinese market'. Engine-makers GE Aerospace and Safran were contacted for comment. A market looms Although the price of the C919 has reportedly come in higher than expected, expectations are that if it can be built at enough scale, it would eventually undercut the price of giants Airbus and Boeing. As Michael O'Leary, chief executive of the ultra-low cost Irish carrier Ryanair, put it recently: 'The Chinese are basically building a f---ing A320. So if it was cheap enough – 10 or 20 per cent cheaper than an Airbus aircraft – then we'd order it,' he told aviation publication Skift in May. To eventually establish a large position in the market, COMAC must have a customer base. COMAC has successfully sold a smaller, 80-seat regional jet, the C909, to airlines in South-East Asia: Lao Airline, VietJet, TransNusa (of Indonesia) and soon GallopAir of Brunei. Alton Aviation Consultancy's Beijing-based Jiang Shuai notes: 'If C919 can be successfully operated in Asia, the track record will support COMAC's C919 future sales outside of Asia.' Focus on Asia As for the continued technological development of COMAC's aircraft, China's experience in other industries is instructive. When Western bans on telco equipment-maker Huawei hobbled its exports into developed markets in 2018, the company pivoted to the Global South, where governments were less fussed by the prospect of security concerns. CSIS's Kennedy notes that regulators in most of the world still only consider purchasing aircraft certified by the FAA or the EASA. As for the Huawei example, 'there is no comparable Western-based regulator of telecom equipment'. 'Neither [the FAA nor EASA] has certified or is likely to certify the C919 any time soon because of concerns over safety,' Kennedy says. Yet demand for new jets is real. After years of supply disruptions, difficulty in sourcing parts, and the impact of COVID, the backlog to be delivered to airlines exceeds 17,000 planes, says the International Air Transport Association. Boeing is still contending with the aftermath of two 737 Max jetliner crashes that killed 346 people, blamed on the botched rollout of a software system. Production restrictions have slowed Boeing's all-important 737 further. Alton Aviation's Shuai says: 'Given Boeing's and Airbus' supply chain issues and delayed deliveries, we expect Chinese airlines to continue to demand and take deliveries of C909 and C919 aircraft. 'Domestic demand is sufficient to fill COMAC's production rates for the next few years.' Efficiency matters The economics of aviation are not just the upfront costs of planes. Earnings in commercial aviation are underpinned by ever more inexpensive planes to operate in fleets. Each new plane model must be a full 20-30 per cent more efficient than the last to stay profitable over its lifetime. If COMAC produces a structurally less efficient and more costly plane, it will saddle buyers with more expenses, making the plane less competitive. Yet China is determined to achieve what Aboulafia refers to as 'autonomous (or autarkic) aviation power', autarky being complete economic self-sufficiency. Aboulafia has testified that China hopes to introduce a fully Chinese version of the C919, which includes the hardest part, 'all-Chinese engines', around 2035. With this trajectory, China will be closer to its goal, aided deeply by Western aerospace companies, says Foundation for Defence of Democracy's de La Bruyère. 'Early on, maybe it was harder to see a future in which China would be able to develop real, competitive technology in the field,' she said, so the logic of engaging in China 'maybe made a little more sense'. Loading 'But the fact that the partnerships continue despite China's proven and advancing capabilities, proven intention to disrupt the incumbents and methods of doing all that, is fundamentally destructive for them.' Asked what's wrong with China succeeding in the commercial aerospace, de La Bruyère said Western businesses fundamentally misunderstand the concept of success to the Chinese Communist Party. 'The CCP has a different vision for what industrial and technological success means. 'It's not profit, it's control.'
