Tencent’s Pony Ma is China's Model Tech Billionaire
Tencent’s Pony Ma is China's Model Tech Billionaire
Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma is one of China’s wealthiest people. His cooperation with the party has also made him, officially, a member of China’s national legislature.
At its peak in 2021, the Chinese tech company Tencent was valued at nearly $1 trillion, becoming one of the world’s top ten most valuable companies before a downturn in tech stocks reduced its value by over half. Tencent is currently either China’s most valuable or second-most valuable company, with a market capitalization of about $300 billion.1 Tencent’s most popular service is WeChat, which is ubiquitous in China, serving as an all-in-one communications, payment, rideshare, and gaming service for nearly 1.3 billion monthly active users.2 Tencent is the world’s largest video game company by revenue and has portfolio investments in other companies worth approximately $95 billion.3 The company also owns China’s second-largest cloud platform, its largest digital payments platform, and one of its most popular video services. The chairman and CEO of Tencent is Ma Huateng—also called Pony Ma—who co-founded the company in 1998 and has served as its CEO for 23 years since then. Though Ma has briefly been the richest person in China, as of October 2022 he is in fourth place with a net worth of about $49 billion.4