Colin Huang, founder of the PDD Holdings business group. Photo courtesy of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business
Colin Huang, a former Google engineer turned founder of business group PDD Holdings, now has the highest net worth among Chinese tech billionaires at $53.4 billion, according to the Hurun Research Institute.
The 44-year-old billionaire’s wealth soared 71% from a year earlier on a sharp rise in PDD’s U.S.-listed shares, fueled by the company’s better-than-expected performance, the report said. South China Morning Post ” reported, citing data from the Shanghai-based research unit’s Global Rich List 2024 report.
In China, its Pinduoduo e-commerce platform has outpaced rivals operated by Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com.
Its overseas platforms, Temu and Kuaituantuan, also showed robust growth.
The influx of wealth for Huang has placed him at the head of China’s tech tycoons, securing him the country’s second-richest spot, just behind Zhong Shansan, founder of bottled water producer Nongfu Spring.
The previously richest tech billionaires, Pony Ma Huateng of internet services giant Tencent Holdings and Zhang Yiming of TikTok parent ByteDance, have now slipped to third and fourth positions with a net worth of $35 billion and $34 billion. dollars, respectively.
Although not yet a global household name, Huang is a prominent figure in China, largely due to the success of the e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, which his company founded in 2015 and listed in New York in July 2018. , according to Business Insider.
He was born into a family of factory workers and worked as an engineer for Google in 2004 before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey in 2007.
