Former Google engineer Colin Huang becomes China’s top tech billionaire

The 44-year-old billionaire’s wealth has soared by 71% from a year earlier thanks to a surge in PDD’s US-listed shares, fueled by firm’s better-than-expected performances, the South China Morning Post reported, citing data from the Shanghai-based research unit’s Global Rich List 2024 report.

In China, its e-commerce platform Pinduoduo has outpaced its rivals operated by Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com.

Its overseas platforms, Temu and Kuaituantuan, have also demonstrated robust growth.

The influx of wealth for Huang has positioned him at the helm of China’s tech tycoons, securing him the nation’s second richest individual spot, just behind Zhong Shansan, founder of bottled water producer Nongfu Spring.

The previously wealthiest tech billionaires, Pony Ma Huateng of Internet services giant Tencent Holdings and Zhang Yiming of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, have now slipped to the third and fourth positions with net worths of $35 billion and $34 billion, respectively.

While not yet a household name globally, Huang is a prominent figure in China, largely due to the success of the Pinduoduo e-commerce platform, which was established in 2015 by his firm 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.