Forbes on Wednesday released its latest list of the 2016 top 100 richest billionaires in the technology field in the world. 19 of the billionaires are from mainland China.
According to Forbes, the net worth of the 100 rich people in the list reached an astonishing USD 892 billion, a 6% increase over 2015.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates topped the list with a net worth of USD 78 billion; he is also the richest person in the world. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos ranked second with USD 66.2 billion, followed by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg with USD 54 billion.
China has 19 tech billionaires, the second highest number. The richest three Chinese are also founders of three biggest tech companies in China: Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu.
With a net worth of USD 25.8 billion, founder of Alibaba Jack Ma was the wealthiest among the three. He ranked eighth in the list. Founder and CEO of Tencent Pony Ma ranked ninth with USD 22 billion. The “poorest” one, founder and CEO of Baidu, Robin Li, was at the 16th place with USD 12 billion.
Other Chinese billionaires included Ding Lei, founder and CEO of Chinese news portal and games developer NetEase, at 17th place with USD 11.7 billion; Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, at 22nd with USD 9.8 billion; Richard Liu, founder and CEO of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, at 37th with USD 5.6 billion; and Jia Yueting, founder and CEO of Chinese tech giant LeEco, at 45th with USD 4.7 billion.
This year’s top 100 list in the tech field also saw new faces from China. The wealthiest one is Wang Xing, founder of Groupon-like group-buying website Meituan. His net worth was greatly increased after the merge of Meituan and customer review site Dianping.com in October 2015. Wang ranked 58th in the list with a net worth of USD 3.5 billion.
(Top photo from Blog.sina.com.cn)
