What Is Colin Huang's Net Worth?
Colin Huang is a Chinese businessman, philanthropist, and investor who has a net worth of $49 billion. Colin Huang is best known for being the founder and former CEO of Pinduoduo, China's largest e-commerce platform. Pinduoduo is owned by PDD Holdings, which also owns e-commerce giant Temu. Huang is one of the richest Chinese people in the world. At one point in early 2021, amid COVID lock downs, his net worth hit $70 billion. As COVID went away, his fortune dropped around 90%. It eventually recovered, and in August 2024 he once again became the richest person in China.
Colin worked as an engineer at Google before founding Pinduoduo in 2015. In 2019, Pinduoduo reported revenue of $4.33 billion. In 2018, the company went public in the United States. At the time, Huang had a 47% stake worth $14 billion. Pinduoduo, which is based in Shanghai, China, has more than 3,000 employees and allows users to participate in group buying deals. The company reported online discount vouchers worth tens of millions of Yuan were stolen in 2019. Colin previously founded an e-commerce website called Oku, which he sold for more than $2 million in 2010.
Early Life
Colin Huang was born Huang Zheng on January 1, 1980, in Zhejiang, China. He grew up in a middle class family, and his parents were factory workers. Colin was educated at Hangzhou Foreign Language School, and when he was 18, he enrolled at Zhejiang University's Chu Kuchen Honors College, where he studied computer science. As a college freshman, Huang was chosen for a Melton Fellowship, which "offers diverse pathways for passionate individuals committed to fostering positive social change." Colin later attended the University of Wisconsin, earning a master's degree in computer science in 2004.
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Pinduoduo
Huang landed internships at Google and Microsoft, and Google hired him as an engineer in 2004. He returned to China in 2006 to expand Google's services there. Colin resigned from the company in 2007, then he launched Oku, an e-commerce website. In 2010, he sold Oku for $2.2 million.
In 2015, Huang founded Pinduoduo, and two years later, the company's revenue was $280 million. In 2019, Pinduoduo reported a revenue of $4.33 billion. In 2018, the company investigated and closed stores that had violated its policy against violence and pornography, and the following year, it reported the theft of vouchers worth tens of millions of Yuan to police after hackers found a loophole in Pinduoduo's system.
Colin was ranked #7 on the 2019 Huron Report and #2 on the 2020 Huron Global Young Zhuang Sect Self-Made Rich List. He stepped down from the CEO position in July 2020 and from the chairman position in 2021. The company stated that Huang would "pursue research in the food and life sciences, disciplines where breakthroughs could drive the future of China's largest agriculture platform."
Philanthropy
By mid-2020, Colin had reduced his Pinduoduo stake to just over 29% after he donated 7.74% to the Pinduoduo Partnership and 4.74% to charitable organizations. In 2021, he was ranked #1 on the "Hurun China Philanthropy List" due to him pledging to donate $1.85 billion to scientific research and social responsibility projects. Huang and his Pinduoduo co-founders have donated $100 million to the charitable trust The Starry Night Foundation to "support fundamental research in biomedical science, agriculture and food." They established the trust in 2020.
