Billionaire college dropout Lucy Guo is reportedly the youngest self-made woman on the planet—knocking Taylor Swift off the top spot. But even with a $1.3 billion reported net worth, the 30-year-old cofounder of Scale AI tells Fortune she still pinches the pennies and shops at Shein.
Despite founding and retaining a $1.3 billion stake in an AI unicorn, you won’t catch Lucy Guo wasting her billions on a lavish lifestyle to match her new status.
“I don’t like wasting money,” the frugal 30-year-old tells Fortune.
Of course, sometimes Guo will splurge—like if she’s got a 16 hour flight to endure, she says she’ll opt for business class. And there’s the odd designer dress hanging in her closet for when she needs it.
“But in terms of like daily life, my assistant just drives me in a pretty old Honda Civic. I don’t care,” she says.
“Everything I wear is free or from Shein… Some of them aren’t going to be that great quality, but there’s always like two pieces or so that really work out, and I just wear them every day,” the billionaire founder laughs. “I still literally buy buy-one-get-one-free on Uber Eats.”
Guo, who is currently the founder and CEO of the creator community platform Passes, adds that a quote she stumbled on on the morning of our interview perfectly summarises her approach: “It’s like, act broke, stay rich.”
Guo hit the jackpot after the AI startup she cofounded, Scale AI, was reportedly valued at $25 billion in April as part of a share sale.
Although she left the company in 2018 (two years after founding it), the 5% stake she held onto is now worth an estimated $1.2 billion—making the millennial one of just 5 female billionaires under 40 according to Forbes’ latest ranking, including Rihanna and Anthropic’s cofounder Daniela Amodei.
It’s why Guo no longer feels the need to prove her wealth with a Patek Philippe everyday watch, or a Hermès Birkin to carry her laptop. That, she says, is the behaviour of millionaires.
“Who you see typically wasting money on, designer clothes, a nice car, et cetera, they’re technically in the millionaire range,” Guo explains. “All their friends are multimillionaires, or billionaires and they feel a little bit insecure, so they feel the need to be flashy to show other people, ‘look, I’m successful.’”
“I’m not showing off to anyone, right?”
Indeed, for our interview, she’s makeup-free, dressed down, and could pass for any other millennial. But earlier in her career, Guo admits she, too, may have been dripping in designer gear.
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