More than twenty years ago, a Chinese engineer working in Silicon Valley with little more than a chip design. He wrote a phrase in an email that sounded like delirium at the time: predicted that the global memory business would end, sooner or later, in the hands of Chinese companies. Almost no one paid attention to him. Today, that engineer is one of the largest technological millionaires in China with a fortune estimated at 15.5 billion dollars. according to Forbes.
His company has just debuted on the stock market with a force that has caught half of the Asian market off guard. And it is not an isolated case. An entire generation of young entrepreneurs is growing behind him. Chinese with giant fortunes. Unlike their North American counterparts, their objective is to go completely unnoticed by adopting a discreet public profile.
Chinese millionaires: from bricks to chips
The visionary engineer of Silicon Valley his name is Zhu Yiming and founded CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies), the largest Chinese DRAM memory chip manufacturer. When went public in Shanghai, its shares rose 500% on the first day surpassing Intel in capitalization. In 2018, Zhu committed to not collect his salary until the company made money. He fulfilled it.
Zhu Yiming. Founder and CEO of CXMT
Zhu is not alone in this new crop of Chinese millionaires who have gone from basing their fortune on the steel industry, construction or real estate speculation young entrepreneurs whose startups have become the technological cutting edge in AI and semiconductor development. According to the Hurun report 2026China already has 29 self-made billionaires aged 40 or younger.
Liang Wenfengfounder of DeepSeek, rarely gave interviews when his AI model shook Silicon Valley. Your company just closed a new round of financing, and with it, his fortune climbed to the 36 billion of dollars. An estimate that places his fortune above that of Dario Amodei or Sam Altman.
Millionaires with a global vocation
This new generation of millionaires in China is not like the previous one. The big names of the nineties became rich driven by the real estate growth and the big factories for the west. Their growth objectives were in China and they did not contemplate expanding beyond its borders.
On the other hand, the new millionaires have a more global vision for their products. Wang Ning created the Labubu dolls of Pop Mart and became the China’s tenth largest fortune and the youngest to achieve it. His toy triumphed across half the planet before many could even pronounce its name. He was not born with the aspiration of stay alone in China.
Junjie Zhang founded something as united with chinese culture like a milk tea chain: Chagee. Just two years later it opened its first store outside of China and nine years later it is already a global success that listed on Nasdaq and operates in several countries.
These new millionaires have not only adopted a more global philosophy in their companies, but they have also known how to connect with the needs of their employees. For years, Chinese business culture revolved around model 996: work from nine in the morning to nine at night, six days a week.
Millionaires like Jack Ma or the founder of JD.com They defended that model of working day. However, the new generation break that habit to capture to the best talent.
The price of growing fast
However, not everything is an advantage for this new elite of billionaires. The Chinese Government continues to closely monitor the movements of its great fortunes since it punished in an exemplary way to Jack Ma. That happened after saying a speech criticizing to financial market regulators in 2020.
In 2026, Beijing has blocked the sale from the artificial intelligence startup Manu to Meta for two billion dollars. Its founder, Xiao Hong, would have become a billionaire if the deal would have been closed.
These types of run-ins explain why so many successful businessmen in China avoid the spotlight. They fear that a political turn in China or the US will change their business overnight, leaving their fortunes exposed. They let their products be and not their facesthose who cross borders make headlines in the press around the world.
The most global elite in Chinese history is, at the same time, the most difficult to recognize on the street.
Image | Pop Mart, CXMT, Unsplash (aboodi vesakaran)
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