Latest news with #30Under
USA Today
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
'Shang-Chi' star Simu Liu is engaged to Allison Hsu: 'Nine rings left'
'Shang-Chi' star Simu Liu is engaged to Allison Hsu: 'Nine rings left' Show Caption Hide Caption Simu Liu wants to avoid 'slandering' stars while hosting the 2024 PCAs Simu Liu explains his commitment to not "slandering anyone" and why "we have to talk about" Taylor Swift while hosting the 2024 PCAs. Make that 11 rings. "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" star Simu Liu, 36, has confirmed he is engaged to partner Allison Hsu. The Marvel actor revealed the news in a romantic Instagram post on May 11, which showed him and Hsu sharing a kiss. "From weekends in Paris, day trips to Palm Springs, long nights on set, afternoons vegging on the couch and everything in between, I choose you forever and always," he wrote. Liu also shared the news on his Instagram story. "Nine rings left," he wrote, referencing the title of his Marvel superhero film "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings." Hsu, meanwhile, posted a series of photos showing a closer look at the engagement ring along with the caption, "Us forever 💍💍💍🤍🤍🤍." Liu and Hsu, a digital marketing director at the record label Interscope Records, have been linked since 2022. That same year, she was listed on Forbes' 30 Under 30 in the music category, with the magazine noting Hsu "leads all things digital and social for" artists including Billie Eilish, Finneas and Lady Gaga. Speaking with People magazine in 2023, Liu said that Hsu "absolutely changed my life," adding, "She's really taught me that you have to fight for the time with the people that you love, she's really taught me that you need to be intentional and tend to each and every one of the relationships that matter to you." People's Choice Awards host Simu Liu promises to 'punch up': 'It's not about slandering' In an Instagram post for her birthday in 2023, Liu also wrote that Hsu "inspires me in her passion for music," "teaches me how to balance a busy and chaotic schedule with grace, and touches me in how she cares for each and every person in her life." How a Marvel tweet, blue spray paint and 'Good Will Hunting' led to Simu Liu's 'Shang-Chi' stardom Liu debuted as Marvel superhero Shang-Chi in 2021 and has been confirmed as part of the massive cast of 2026's "Avengers: Doomsday," which also stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth and other Marvel A-listers. Since "Shang-Chi," Liu also had a role as a Ken in Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and starred opposite Woody Harrelson in the thriller "Last Breath."
Al Bawaba
24-04-2025
- Business
- Al Bawaba
Taylor Swift dethroned: Lucy Guo becomes youngest self-made female Billionaire
ALBAWABA - Taylor Swift is no longer the youngest self-made female billionaire—tech genius Lucy Guo now holds that title. Three years prior to Swift, another female boss achieved the remarkable feat, Although Taylor Swift remains the wealthiest woman in the music industry, she has recently faced challenges in another area. Since 2023, the 35-year-old singer has also been the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world; however, the distinction has since been given to another incredibly successful female leader. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 02: Taylor Swift (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images via AFP) According to Forbes, Swift became a billionaire by the age of 33 thanks to the money she made from her global Eras Tour and the value of her song library. Approximately $600 million of her estimated $1.6 billion net worth is thought to have come from royalties and touring, and she also owns roughly $125 million in real estate. Swift also once claimed the distinction of being the youngest female self-made billionaire in history, which some may consider invaluable. Taylor Swift's music and tour earnings have made her extremely wealthy. (TAS/Kevin Winter/TAS24) However, she has now lost that distinction to tech mogul Lucy Guo, who, three years ahead of Swift, managed to amass a cash account comparable to the biggest music star in the world, according to Forbes. BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 16: Lucy Guofor Passes/AFP The 30-year-old is a co-founder of Scale AI, a data annotation business based in California that offers labeled data for AI application training. Guo, who majored in computer science before leaving college to pursue a fellowship, founded the company in 2016 at the age of 21 alongside Alexandr Wang, who was 19 at the time. She oversaw the operations and product design teams of the San Francisco company, and Wang served as CEO. Forbes' 30 Under 30 list featured the pair two years later. After reportedly disagreeing with Wang over how Scale AI was being operated, Guo later quit the company, saying in a statement, "We had a difference of opinion, but I am proud of what Scale AI has accomplished." However, she retained her ownership part in the company, which is estimated to be around five percent; the value of this portion has increased due to a deal that is presently being finalized. According to Forbes, Scale AI is finalizing an offer that would enable early staff members and investors in the nine-year-old business to sell shares to new or existing investors. When it's finished on June 1st, the company's worth is expected to soar to a staggering $25 billion, an astounding 80 percent increase over this time last year. Forbes predicts that the entrepreneur's stake would now soar to $1.2 billion as a result of everything, enabling her to unseat Swift from the top spot. It is estimated that Guo's entire net worth, including her ownership of her second startup company, Passes, will be $1.25 billion. She now belongs to an exclusive group of women who have transformed themselves to become billionaires before turning forty, something that just six other women on earth do. As previously disclosed to Fortune, Guo had an 'extremely frugal' upbringing and continued to 'live inexpensively' until she had had'made her first $10 million.' As she stated in 2023, "Be thrifty and always live below your means." She believes that's the finest way to live. "A lot of people up their lifestyles when they start making more money, which causes them to not save as much. The more money you save, the more you can invest, which compounds over the years. "Your network is your net worth."
Forbes
15-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
30 Under 30 Europe Technology 2025: The Young Innovators Shaping The AI Revolution At Breakneck Speed
It's been little over a year since Freiburg, Germany-based Black Forest Labs launched in 2024, but it's made big waves in a short amount of time. Its AI is now the text-to-image generator integrated into the $6 billion (valuation) Mistral Al's Le Chat, and it raised over $31 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz in August. Led by 28-year olds Frederic Boesel and Jonas Muller—along with their over 30 cofounders—the company is positioning itself to be a big mover in AI, making the base models underpinning powerful image generation widely accessible. As Andreessen Horowitz wrote after investing, the Black Forest Labs team 'could accelerate innovation across a wide range of fields.' Sebastian Nevols for Forbes For nearly a decade, Forbes has highlighted young entrepreneurs for our annual 30 Under 30 Europe Technology list, with the help of nominations from the public. To be considered for this year's list, all candidates had to be under the age of 30 as of April 8, 2025, and never before named to an 30 Under 30 North America, Asia or Europe list. After months of reporting by Forbes editors, candidates were evaluated by a panel of judges including founder of London-based unicorn Faculty, Dr. Angie Ma; partner at Silicon Valley-based IVP, Eric Liaw; EQT Growth partner Carolina Brochado and Under 30 alum and Chainalysis cofounder Jonathan Levin. This year's cohort is full of founders who've made waves in AI just a year or two after founding. Caoimhe Murphy, 29 left another Forbes Under 30 alum, Synesthesia, in 2024 to cofound Anam, which creates AI avatars for customer service and sales. It's already attracting top tier clients like Spotify and German multinational Henkel. Sweden's Lovable, founded in 2023 by 24-year-old Fabian Hedin lets users spin up working apps with just some text prompts. And Georgina Steele, 29, founded U.K.-based Maiven last year, which developed AI that can flag potential breaches of environmental law. Others members of this year's list are making big impacts by disrupting older industries. Featured honoree Simon Hennes, the 27-year-old cofounder of Vivenu, says his ticketing platform is taking a tech-first, white label approach to event ticketing, giving organisers control over how they sell tickets and handle customer information. It's a different strategy to the major industry players like Ticketmaster, but Hennes thinks a fresh take on an old market is the way to shake things up. 'There are lots of Goliaths out there, right?' he told Forbes. 'There are big, big companies with massive funding, with thousands of people in seed with a big history, and decades of providing these services. It's not easy to compete with them, but at the same time, it doesn't change the fact that your mission is important and people buy into it.' Investors are confident that such bold approaches will pay off, and the companies on the Technology list have collectively raised more than $300 million in recent years. Among the companies who've scored big rounds, Vivenu has raised $60 million, Black Forest Labs $30 million and Lovable $20 million. Not that fundraising is everything. The mission comes first. Hennes says that his company doesn't yet need more funding as it's a profitable business. Still, he wants to double headcount and revenue growth over the next year. 'Our mission is to become the largest ticket provider globally, right? So we have a long term mission. It's not a short-term mission, it's not a mid-term mission. It's a long term mission.' The same will go for many of this year's Under 30 Europe group. They may have made big splashes in no time at all, but the road ahead will be long and, with some luck, prosperous. This year's list was edited by Thomas Brewster, Zoya Hasan and Iain Martin . For a link to our complete 30 Under 30 Europe Technology list, click here, and for full 30 Under 30 Europe coverage, click here.
Forbes
11-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Payment Platform Dealflow Increased Transactions By 10,000% And What's Next With AI
Think this is nice? It's a version of the weekly Under 30 newsletter and would be even better in your inbox. Seb Haugeto In 2019, Seb Haugeto dropped out of college. The now 27-year-old was paid nearly $20,000 to travel across Europe to produce a web series called Hostels Around The World about his backpacking escapades. Haugeto, who later made the 30 Under 30 list in 2024 for his work as the founder and CEO of financial company Dealflow, worked with countless hostels and booking sites during his time abroad. He soon realized a primary pain point for content creators was getting paid easily, and on time. 'I had a lot of issues with invoicing payments and just finance in general,' he said. 'So the Dealflow mission is very personal to me, which is to democratize financial expertise for business owners everywhere.' He officially launched Dealflow in 2022 as a SaaS company that helped content creators run their businesses. But last year, he pivoted to focus on payment and invoicing services for small businesses specifically. Since launching that version last summer, transaction volumes have grown from €5,000 to over €500,000 a month—that's almost a 10,000% increase. The €500,000 comes from around 100 active monthly users, he said. But Dealflow isn't stopping there. That's why he raised an additional $100,000 (on top of more than $1.5 million previously raised through angels and a pre-seed round) to continue building. Led by investors from Klarna, PayPal Ventures and SumUp, this round will mostly go toward engineering salaries. But another priority for the platform is to increase capacity on the site. After all, the demand is obvious: 'There are more than 500 freelancers and companies on the waitlist right now,' Haugeto said. Potential customers range from companies with revenues in the several millions per month to freelancers with a few thousand per month. All in all, though, the current waitlist would amount to €10 million in processed payments monthly if onboarded today, Haugeto said. But he's conscious about growing too fast. 'It's important for us to have a filter and be conscious about what kind of companies we serve and where we serve them… and to have a very controlled onboarding process,' Haugeto said. 'We only onboard companies when we feel like we have capacity to take on more volume, and that's a slightly different strategy than I know a lot of companies take.' To increase their ability to help more SMBs, Dealflow is investing in AI—for both internal and external use. For instance, they're building an internal bot that will make the Dealflow team's tasks like onboarding and compliance more efficient. And AI will soon be used to make the user experience better, too. With the implementation of AI agents, Haugeto hopes to automate payments reporting and accounting for clients. 'AI is part of our long-term vision,' he said. 'We're building the foundation for that today.' See you next week, Alex and Zoya Courtesy of Much Since launching her overnight oats brand Mush, Under 30 Food & Drink alum Ashley Thompson has sourced her oats from Canada. But with the Trump Administration's global tariffs in play, Thompson needs to come up with a plan. What will her next move be? Find out here. -Brinc, a drone startup founded by Under 30 alum Blake Resnick, this week announced it raised $75 million in a round led by Index Ventures. Brinc uses its drones for public safety, partnering with first responders. When we last chatted with Resnick, he had just launched a drone that connects to a 911 calling system, providing live footage of the scene in under 70 seconds, and can deliver supplies like epipens or Narcan. The latest round brings the startup's total funding to $157.2 million. -Alinea, an app teaching Gen Z how to invest money and manage wealth, this week raised $10.4 million in a Series A round led by Play Ventures. The app has gone viral on TikTok, with the majority of its current users being women. When cofounders Eve Halimi and Anam Lakhani made the Under 30 list in 2024, they had raised $3.3 million from Goodwater Capital and Y Combinator. -Content creator, podcast host and 2024 Under 30 alum Jake Shane is hitting the big screen. Shane will be joining the cast of Hacks, the Primetime Emmy Award-winning comedy TV series, for its fourth season. Who's he playing? Well… himself. According to Variety, Shane—who has more than 4 million followers on social media—will be playing the role of 'Social Media Girlie.' The new season premiered on Max yesterday. We're bringing you the scoop on a new Under 30 community member. Up this week: 2025 Under 30 Music lister Zoe Wrenn, founder of Tamber. A self-taught coder, Wrenn created an AI-driven software that helped her make a song called 'Hailey' in 2020, which hit No. 2 on Billboard's Digital Chart and earned 30 million streams. Her software, now called Tamber, helps artists with melodies, lyrics, and self-production. The startup has raised $3 million in funding from investors like M13 and Rackhouse VC. The following has been slightly edited for length and clarity. You're a self-taught coder. When did your interest in technology begin? Around 13 years old. I saw a website, thought 'I wanna build that,' ended up on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) the same night, talking to other coders around the world until like 3:00 a.m. I pretty much decided that night that music & tech were the two universal languages, and I needed to be fluent in both. How did you get the idea for Tamber? During early covid, I built the first version of Tamber which was basically an 'ai co‑writer' to break writer's block. It helped me finish a track in 10 minutes. The TikTok demo hit 15 million views on the first day, and that's when I realized the real gap: Tools that speed us up without stealing the steering wheel. Tamber's grown a ton since, but the mission hasn't changed—super‑charge musicians, never replace them. What's been the most rewarding part of becoming an entrepreneur, and what's the most challenging? Rewarding: The people. I'm surrounded by brilliant, generous minds who make me level up daily. Challenging: Doing it solo. There were 74‑hour coding marathons with less than $10 in my account and zero safety net. Brutal, but I'd do it again every time. There's a lot of debate around the use of AI in music. What do you say to the adversaries? I agree with them. I think most of the AI music tools that have launched aim to replace musicians with synthetic audio, despite them arguing they aren't. I think it's horrible. There are a lot of aspects of the process that could be expedited and taken off the artist's shoulders while still leaving them in control. Why attempt to replace the very thing people commit their lives to? It makes no sense to me. How big of a role do you imagine tech will play in the music industry over the next decade? I think it really depends on the artist. You can't force tech into a creative space; people guard what they make. Remove every bit of friction and you risk stripping out the soul. Art is a living, breathing thing. I think when AI begins to move in the same way without taking away too much control, we'll see more integration. What's one piece of advice you have for other young entrepreneurs? If you wouldn't burn your comfort zone for the mission, pick a different mission. Tell us about a day in the life! What are you listening to? Lately I'm deep into Sudanese Arabic music. Tamber recommended it and nailed the vibe. On repeat: Hleem Taj Alser, Gigi Perez, Rüfüs du Sol, Porter Robinson, Baaba Maal, plus any bardcore fantasy playlist. Any favorite musicians? What about favorite CEOs? Keaton Henson, Anais Mitchell, Pixies, Death Cab, Baaba Maal. What's a hot take you have? Removing all friction from creativity is a mistake. A little discomfort can fuel great art. AI should be the sparring partner, not the autopilot. What's one thing the Under 30 community doesn't know about you? I'm really into Dungeons and Dragons. It's not even funny. It took five days to make my first character. TikTok wont stop showing me 'dragon decor' ads.
