E-commerce tycoon Colin Huang (黃崢) has become China’s richest man, an index showed on Friday, capping an ascent for the former Google employee whose shopping site Temu has sucked in consumers with its low prices and powerful algorithms.
Huang, the founder of PDD Holdings Inc (拼多多控股) — which owns Temu and Chinese retail app Pinduoduo (拼多多) — is now worth US$48.6 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index said.
He overtook beverage company Nongfu Spring (農夫山泉) founder Zhong Shanshan (鍾睒睒), who had topped the list since April 2021, as the world’s 25th wealthiest person and the richest in China.
Photo: AFP
Close behind them is tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) cofounder Ma Huateng (馬化騰), also known as Pony Ma, whose WeChat is often described as China’s “everything app.”
In fourth place is Zhang Yiming (張一鳴), founder of Bytedance Ltd (字節跳動), which owns the massively popular TikTok video-sharing platform.
Huang, born in 1980 in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, was a teenage mathematics whizz and a former employee of Google China. He founded online shopping site Pinduoduo in 2015, which blossomed into one of China’s most successful e-commerce empires — rivaling Jack Ma’s (馬雲) Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴).
The app lured in consumers with huge discounts and a vast array of products, offering sometimes staggeringly low prices in a fiercely competitive field.
Its overseas iteration Temu launched in 2022 in the US, where it amassed a loyal consumer base with ultra-low-cost goods made and shipped from China.
Temu’s success dovetailed with persistently high inflation that has pushed cost-conscious consumers to hunt for bargains, and it has since taken off in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere.
Despite only arriving in Europe last year, Temu has said it has on average about 75 million monthly active users in the region.
However, its massive success had drawn accusations of unfair commercial practices and lax safety standards.
This year, consumer groups in Europe said Temu was manipulating shoppers into spending more money, distorting their ability to make “free and informed decisions.”
In April, South Korean regulators opened an investigation into Temu on suspicion of false advertising and unfair practices.
Last month, hundreds of merchants in China demonstrated at an affiliated office in the southern city of Guangzhou, alleging unfair treatment in the sale of their products on the platform.
However, that has done little to dent the success of the firm, with PDD Holdings announcing in May that first-quarter net profit had more than tripled year-on-year.
The firm’s US-listed shares closed at US$138.02 apiece on Thursday, giving it a market capitalization of US$191.68 billion.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
RSS