Lucy Guo

Lucy Guo is an American entrepreneur and engineer who co-founded Scale AI. In 2022, she founded her second start-up, known as Passes.

Guo was born October 14, 1994 and raised in Fremont, California, by Chinese immigrant parents who worked as electrical engineers. She began coding at a young age; as a teenager she taught herself programming and earned money by developing bots for the online game Neopets and selling the in-game assets for profit. Guo enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University where she studied computer science but dropped out in 2014 after being selected for the Thiel Fellowship, a two-year $100,000 grant for young people to pursue entrepreneurial projects instead of completing their studies.

Guo interned at Facebook before joining Snapchat as the company's first female designer. At Snapchat, she helped develop Snap Maps. She then moved to Quora where she met Alexandr Wang. They co-founded Scale AI in 2016, where Guo led operations and product design efforts. She left two years later due to disagreements with Wang, but with a 5% stake in the company. When Meta bought Scale AI for $25 billion in May 2025, Guo replaced Taylor Swift to become the world's youngest self-made female billionaire. She is one of only six self-made female billionaires on Earth, according to Forbes.

In 2018, Guo launched an app called Apply to Date allowing users to create a dating resume. In 2019, she launched Backend Capital, originally called Backend Ventures, a venture capital firm that primarily funds early-stage engineering startups. The firm has funded startups such as the fintech company Ramp.

In 2022, Guo founded Passes, a social platform that allows creators to post content for paid subscribers. Passes acquired other creator platforms as part of its growth strategy, including Fanhouse, founded by Rosie Nguyen. Passes raised a $40 million Series A in 2024.

Guo's Passes platform claims that it does not allow nudity or sexual content. However, it was sued for allegedly distributing Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) in 2025. Passes said the claim was "defamatory".

As of 2024, Guo lives in Los Angeles.

She was "living as a digital nomad" for a number of years before buying a $6.7 million apartment in 2020 in Miami where her parties caused conflict with neighbors.

In 2024, she purchased another $4.2 million home in West Hollywood, and then purchased a $30 million home in Hollywood Hills in 2025.

Despite her wealth, Guo has been an advocate for a frugal lifestyle, including early influence from the FIRE movement. She claims to drive a Honda Civic and shop at Shein.

• "Lucy Guo profile". Forbes. March 15, 2025.