Lucy Guo | Scale AI

 Lucy Guo is an American entrepreneur, engineer, and social media influencer. She co-founded Scale AI in 2016 before being fired in 2018 and, in 2022, founded Passes, an OnlyFans competitor. Guo is worth an estimated US$1.25 billion as of April 17, 2025, according to Forbes. At that point in time, Guo was World’s Youngest Self-Made Woman Billionaire at age 30.^[1]

Early life and education

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Guo was 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.^[2] Guo enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University where she studied computer science^[2] but dropped out in 2014 after being selected for the Thiel Fellowship,^[3][4] a two-year $100,000 grant for young people to pursue entrepreneurial projects instead of completing their studies.^[2]

Career

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After dropping out of Carnegie Mellon, Guo interned at Facebook before joining Snapchat as the company's first female designer.^[5] At Snapchat, she helped develop Snap Maps.^[6] She then moved to Quora where she met Alexandr Wang.^[7] They co-founded Scale AI in 2016, but she was fired two years later in 2018.^[8]

In 2018, she launched an app called Apply to Date allowing users to create a dating resume.^[9]

In 2022 she founded Passes, an OnlyFans competitor using connections from parties she attended.^[10][11][12] It raised a $40 million Series A in 2024.^[13]

Passes was reported in 2024 to have allowed an account featuring a 12-year-old selling bikini photos after she had been banned by another platform. The account was removed only after the New York Times requested comment.^[14]

In 2025, Passes and Guo were sued by another creator who stated that they had distributed child sexual abuse material of her before she turned 18.^[15][16][12]

Personal life

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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.^[17][18] She was described by the New York Post in 2022 as Miami's number one party girl.^[19][7]

In 2024, she purchased another $4.2 million home in West Hollywood.^[20]