Huaten Ma (Ma Huateng)

Huaten Ma (Ma Huateng)

Biography

Huateng was born on October 29, 1971 in Guangdong Province. In 1993 he graduated from Shenzhen University with a degree in computer technology. His first job software was creating for pagers at China Motion Telecom Development, telecommunication a service and product provider in Shenzhen. With a fellow student, Ma co-founded Tencent in November 1998. The name of the company in Chinese means "rushing message." Its first product was instant software messaging, similar to AOL's ICQ. Ma first named the product OICQ, and a few years later changed it to QQ.

2024: Net worth - $43.9 billion

The founder and head of the Chinese Internet company Tencent, Ma Huateng, also known by the pseudonym Pony Ma, has become China's richest man. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, released on September 16, 2024, Ma's fortune is $43.9 billion.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Ma was ahead of Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance Ltd., which owns the TikTok video service, in terms of fortune. Imin's capital is estimated at $43 billion. In third place in the list of the richest people in the PRC is the owner of the country's largest bottled water producer Nongfu Spring Zhong Shanshan, whose fortune is also approximately $43 billion.

Ma represents a "new generation of Chinese billionaires" whose business aims to meet the "psychological" rather than physical needs of clients, says Hao Gao, director of the Global Family Business Research Center at Tsinghua University. At the same time, Bloomberg notes that the state of Chinese billionaires has sharply decreased due to the introduction of tough measures to regulate the IT market. In particular, Ma's capital fell 40% from its peak in January 2021.^[1]

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