Chen Tianqiao

Chen, 51, has an estimated net worth of US$1.1 billion, according to Forbes. He co-founded Shanda Investment Group in 1999, which grew into one of China’s leading online gaming and digital entertainment companies before listing on Nasdaq. Chen is credited with pioneering both the online gaming and online literature industries in China, playing a key role in Shanda’s emergence as a dominant force in the market.

Now based in the U.S. state of California, he owns significant timberland in Oregon state and ranks among the largest property owners in the U.S., according to The Straits Times newspaper.

In 2016 he and his wife Chrissy donated US$115 million to establish the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology for supporting brain science research.

Jerry Yang

Jerry Yang. Photo courtesy of Stanford University

Yang, 56, who now has an estimated net worth of $3 billion, co-founded Yahoo in 1995 after dropping out of Stanford’s Ph.D. program. “When we were building the company and the internet was being built, there was no playbook,” he told Yahoo Finance. “It was literally the Wild West, and you were trying to figure out what [everything] looked like.”

Yahoo evolved from a personal directory to one of the internet’s most influential companies. He continues to invest in tech start-ups through his venture capital firm, AME Cloud Ventures.

In 2017 he and his wife, Akiko Yamazaki, donated $25 million to San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, the largest in its history. In July 2021 Yang began a two-year term as chair of the board of trustees at Stanford University, where he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Eric Yuan

Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom. Photo from Yuan’s LinkedIn

Yuan, 55, founder and CEO of Zoom, saw his wealth surge during the Covid pandemic amid the widespread adoption of his video conferencing app. His estimated net worth is now $4.6 billion. But his journey to Stateside success did not come easy. The Chinese-born engineer’s U.S. visa was declined eight times before he finally made it to Silicon Valley in 1997 and founded Zoom in 2011.

In a 2020 interview with Bloomberg about the rise of his “pandemic’s social network,” Yuan said, “I never thought that overnight the whole world would be using Zoom.”

He also launched Zoom Cares, the company’s philanthropic arm, which focuses on education, climate change and social equity. An avid basketball fan, he is a supporter of the Golden State Warriors and counts player Andre Iguodala as an investor.

David Sun and John Tu

David Sun and John Tu. Photo courtesy of Kingston Technology

Taiwan-born Sun and mainland China-born Tu, co-founders of Kingston Technology, each have an estimated net worth of $11.7 billion. Their company, founded in 1987, quickly became a leader in storage and memory products.

The partnership began nearly a decade earlier, when Tu met Sun in a basketball league in the U.S. in 1978. Sun told him that computers would be the next big thing.”In that case, I want to be in the computer business,” Tu replied.

They started the company in a garage and later sold it to the now-defunct PC maker AST, walking away with $1.3 million each after taxes. Despite their wealth, both men remain humble. Sun, 73, credits his co-founder, 10 years his senior, with a “level-headed” approach that helped guide Kingston to success, saying, “John is a good listener. He’s the anchor.”

Jensen Huang

Co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang. Photo courtesy of Nvidia

Huang leads the list with an estimated net worth of $86.8 billion. The co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, a company known for its innovative graphics processing units and advancements in artificial intelligence, Huang moved to the U.S. from Taiwan to study electrical engineering at Oregon State University and Stanford University.

Born in 1963, he co-founded Nvidia in 1993, fulfilling a vow he had made to his wife, Lori Mills, to become a CEO by the age of 30. Under his leadership, Nvidia’s GPUs have dominated both gaming and AI sectors, propelling the company’s market cap past US$3 trillion in 2024.

In a recent interview Huang said China may be “right behind” the U.S. in AI, and the gap is narrow. “We are very close,” he said. “Remember, this is a long-term, infinite race.”

His philanthropic contributions include a US$30 million donation to Stanford in 2022 and a US$50 million gift to Oregon State University for a namesake research center.