What is Lucy Guo’s net worth?
Lucy Guo is the face and founder of Backend Capital and has a net worth of $850 million. She’s also the co-founder of data platform Scale AI, and a 2014 Thiel Fellowship winner
She’s interned at social media giant Facebook, worked at Quora and Snapchat, and funded several up and coming digital startups in the US.
While Guo might have some pretty impressive credentials to back her up, she’s most likely to be known to fans and followers as a social media party girl.
The savvy beauty—who scored a spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list—has gained a social media following thanks to her hilarious—and sometimes dangerous—antics.
The girl who famously declared she didn’t know who David Beckham was (aside from a legendary footballer and the husband of a Spice Girl, he’s also her neighbor) has a lot going on in her life.
The Origin Story
Lucy Guo attends the debut of Shaq’s Fantasy Lab Las Vegas at the Fashion Show mall on October 08, 2023 – @Getty
Lucy Guo was born on October 14, 1994, in San Francisco, and raised in Silicon Valley.
She credits her early exposure to the world of tech with her later opportunities.
Guos parents were both electrical engineers, who immigrated to the US from China and settled in San Francisco.
Her mom discouraged her from following in their footsteps, and said it was too hard for a woman to break out in that field.
With her parents’ guidance, Guo was learning about programming and the digital world by the time she was in second grade.
By sixth grade, she could build websites—an impressive feat in the era before Wix and WordPress.
The high-achieving middle schooler was one of the first creators of a Twitter bot, and used to attend hackathons to improve or build out new software.
By the time the young go-getter was in high school, she was earning five figures as an internet marketer—and from there she parlayed her skills into roles as a developer for AccessURL, FriendSwipe, and Pokecrew.
A Legendary Windfall
Hofit Golan and Lucy Guo – @Getty
Before she was even out of high school, Lucy was accepted to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
In her third year of study at the prestigious university, Guo applied for—and won!—the 2014 Theil Fellowship prize.
The prize is a whopping $100,000, courtesy of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Rather than encouraging young entrepreneurs to stay in school and get a qualification, it’s designed to get them out there building their empire.
The $100,000 windfall changed Guo’s trajectory completely.
She dropped out of Carnegie Mellon, explaining that “it was almost a cool thing to drop out.”
Fellow techies with big startup plans were doing the same—and all the biggest companies of the era were founded by college dropouts.
Guo didn’t make the decision lightly.
She thought about the worst case scenario, and she was willing to accept it if it meant giving herself a shot at achieving her goals—plus saving two years of tuition.
Looking back on winning the Thiel Fellowship, Guo has said that it helped her pursue her dreams earlier than she expected—and helped connect her with a group of like-minded, and equally driven, young entrepreneurs.
Welcome to the Real World
@Getty
Initially, Guo spent a few months at Quora—a crowd source Q&A site—before being headhunted by Snapchat.
It was a big move, making Lucy the company’s first ever female designer.
Working for someone else was never Guo’s dream, though. And—in an Uber heading across town—she found the inspiration she needed. Her driver suggested she track down angel investor Paige Craig.
Guo tracked Craig down on Twitter—coincidentally, he was already following her—and asked him for feedback.
He was open to it and the pair scheduled a meet up.
After that, he offered her $1m in seed funding.
Lucy had recently scored a place in the Y Combinator 12-week program—the birthplace of ideas like Dropbox and Twitch—and was pretty confident she didn’t need a million bucks to get her idea off the ground.
She had a counter offer: $100k from Paige Craig and she’d make him a company shareholder.
He took that deal, happily, and Scale AI was born.
The company, founded by Guo and her business partner Alexandr Wang, was valued at $7.3 billion in 2021.
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Settling Down
Lucy Guo and Alexandra Kreeger – @Getty
From there, Guo moved on to Backend Capital—a brand she created to invest in startups as she jets from Los Angeles to New York to Singapore living her dream life and chasing down new opportunities.
In 2020, she bit the bullet and—after two years living like a digital nomad—she bought an apartment in Miami, Florida.
The apartment—estimated to cost $6.7 million—is at One Thousand Museum tower.
The swank address is also home to David Beckham, who Guo met in an elevator one time.
Not really the groupie type, it took Lucy’s friends pointing him out before she realized he was famous.
Husband/Boyfriend
Guo is currently single and living the high life in Miami, LA, and Singapore.
Lucy Guo – Net Worth
So, how much is Lucy Guo worth? Guo earned most of her wealth from co-founding Scale API, working at Snapchat from 2015 to 2016, founding and managing Backend Capital, and serving as the CEO of Moment.
Lucy owns 5.99% of Scale AI. In May 2024, Scale AI was valued at $13.8 billion in Nvidia, Amazon-backed funding round. This makes Guo share valued at $814 million. Therefore, Lucy Guo has an estimated net worth of $850 million.
She also has a Mutant Ape NFT.
Lucy owns a condo in the One Thousand Museum Tower, for which she reportedly paid $6.7 million.
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I am Bulgarea Candin Stefan, and I founded FamousPeopleToday.com in 2018. I’m using my bachelor’s degree in economics and 9 years of experience in blogging to guide millions of people through the incredibly complex world of celebrity net worths.