From ballet to billion-dollar prediction markets, Luana Lopes Lara has taken an unconventional path to co-founding Kalshi and helping shape its rapid rise.
Luana Lopes Lara currently serves as Co-Founder & COO of Kalshi, one of the leading prediction markets in gaming and the first to become CFTC-regulated. Lopes founded the company alongside Tarek Mansour in 2018. The two met while studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Who is Luana Lopes Lara?
Lopes Lara was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. From a young age, Lopes Lara excelled in both arts and academics, having trained as a ballerina at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Joinville. Lopes Lara won a gold medal in the Brazilian Astronomy Olympiad and a bronze medal in the Santa Catarina Mathematics Olympiad during her youth.
At 18 years old, Lopes Lara departed Brazil and moved to the US to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following her graduation, Lara co-founded Kalshi – an online prediction market platform – with Tarek Mansour, and attained a license from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by November 2020.
Education
Throughout her youth in Brazil, Lopes Lara attended the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, where she would attend academic classes from 7am to noon and ballet training from 1pm to 9pm. After leaving Brazil to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lopes Lara graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, followed by a Master of Engineering degree.
Career journey
Coming from a rather unorthodox background, Lopes Lara’s first line of work was as a ballerina at the Salzburger Landestheater in Austria during 2014, where she was invited to dance on the Swan Lake Season.
Once she arrived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lopes Lara became an undergraduate researcher in the Institute’s media lab, prior to securing a Disruption Office internship with Anheuser-Busch in 2015.
During the summer of 2016, Lopes Lara took part in ZX Ventures’ Summer Startup Accelerator Program, all while serving as a Teaching Assistant at the Institute’s School of Engineering from February through December.
Lopes Lara then moved on to become a Software Engineer with Bridgewater Associates in June 2017, and would go on to land a qualitative trading internship with Five Rings Capital at the start of 2018.
She used the internship to secure a Quantitative Trading position with Citadel Securities, as well as helped with research at the university’s Brain and Cognitive Science Department.
After developing Kalshi with Mansour in 2018, Lopes Lara officially took on her role as Co-Founder and COO of the prediction market platform by January of the following year.
Key achievements
Since origin, Kalshi has generated over $175bn of trading volume, including $148bn over the first-half of 2026 alone. In May, Kalshi confirmed a previously reported $22bn valuation following a $1bn Series F funding round, just six months after receiving an $11bn valuation in December 2025.
Due to the prediction market’s success, Lopes Lara became the youngest self-made female billionaire at just 29 years of age, and has helped the operator grow to provide trading on event contracts related to sports, entertainment, politics, weather, science and more.
In 2024, Kalshi achieved a historic milestone by becoming the first fully regulated platform in over a century to offer legal election trading in the US, providing contracts related to the Presidential Election.
Through a number of collaborations with organizations and professional sports leagues, Kalshi has built a recognizable presence across all of gaming. The operator has expanded trading capabilities to mirror traditional sports betting’s parlay offerings, and is coming off a record-breaking performance during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
While still to be confirmed, Kalshi may also soon undergo an additional $750m funding round led by Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management, which would value the operator at approximately $40bn.
Regulatory history
While Kalshi has met the requirements set forth by the CFTC, state regulatory bodies have continued to challenge the operator's services, particularly regarding sports-related event contracts.
In Nevada, New York, Maryland, Michigan, Washington, Ohio, Connecticut, Arizona and countless other US states, Kalshi is currently involved in legal cases to determine whether prediction markets can be regulated on the state level.
International markets have been unkind to prediction markets as well, with numerous jurisdictions already shutting their doors on event contract trading.
Despite the regulatory interference, Kalshi has still managed to generate record-breaking trading volume and revenue for 2026, although whether or not states will gain the ability to oversee such activity is critical to the platform’s future.
Leadership style
Despite Lopes Lara undergoing extremely rigorous conditions while studying at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, her leadership style appears to reflect a disciplined and academic approach, perhaps passed down by her engineer father and mathematics teacher mom.
Lopes Lara’s leadership style also blends strategic vision, risk-taking and operational execution, as well as a bold, iconoclastic approach to problem-solving.
She has been described as hands-on, ensuring that strategic decisions translate into scalable, high-performance systems.
Fun fact: Lopes Lara is a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Women Business Leaders, which establishes a network of female undergraduates, faculty, alumnae and professionals