Lucy Guo Trades Billionaire Status for the Decks

From Tech Prodigy to Festival Convert

Lucy Guo's path to electronic music started with a Twitter DM from a stranger nearly a decade ago. The message offered artist passes to Ultra Korea, and Guo took the chance. That first EDM festival became what she calls one of the best nights of her life, followed quickly by an invite to Ultra Singapore.

Guo dropped out of Carnegie Mellon on a Thiel Fellowship and co-founded Scale AI in 2016, an artificial intelligence infrastructure company now valued at $29 billion. She exited two years later with a 3% stake that briefly made her the world's youngest self-made female billionaire in April 2025, dethroning Taylor Swift before losing the title to Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara in December. She now runs Passes, a creator monetization platform whose roster includes Kygo.

The Creative Outlet That Pays

A 2024 New Year's tweet declaring her intent to become a DJ marked the public pivot. Modeling contracts and influencer deals had started arriving alongside interest from music managers and agents, but Guo knew credibility required more than a following. She began with remixes, including a club flip of "Done with Your Ex" alongside Venessa Michaels and Snugs, but label approval proved frustrating even when original artists were onboard.

That frustration led to her debut original, "Champagne on Me," a tech house track she wrote on a plane. She brought in Australian DJ and producer Lucille Croft to sing after early vocal attempts fell flat. The song reflects her lifestyle literally: both her parents average 4 to 4.5 hours of sleep per night on their Oura rings, a pattern she inherited.

The DJ career now pays more than her pre-startup days as a software engineer and product designer, she says. She's played her own Lucypalooza party, the Getty Villa, the Forbes Under 30 Summit, Ayu Dayclub in Las Vegas, and the Oasis stage at Ultra Miami.

Music Reshaping Business

Guo still calls herself a serial entrepreneur investor first, but making her own music has already started reshaping how she runs Passes. The experience of connecting with fans and executing a song release is creating different types of products and features that better suit DJs, she says.

She joins a small cohort of tech executives who've stepped behind the decks, including Elon Musk and the late Zappos visionary Tony Hsieh. The parallels reflect a shared desire to tap into a different side of the brain. EDC remains the dream booking.