Li Jing

1793367393@qq.com

BEIJING, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are the top three cities where Chinese entrepreneurs with wealth exceeding US$1 billion prefer to live, according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2024 that was unveiled yesterday. For the first time, the list was unveiled in Shenzhen.

A total of 3,279 billionaires from 2,435 companies worldwide made this year’s list, up from 3,112 last year. Elon Musk reclaimed the title of the world’s richest individual, with a fortune of 1.67 trillion yuan (US$231.6 billion). This is his third time being named the world’s richest person in the last four years.

China retains its lead on the list with 814 billionaires, the highest number globally. Fifty-five of them made their debuts on the list, ranking third globally in terms of new entries.

Notably, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area contributed 220 billionaires, with 84 from Shenzhen alone. China also has the highest number of self-made billionaires in the world and the highest number of self-made female billionaires. The Yangtze River Delta region has 252 billionaires who made the list.

Zhong Shanshan, founder of Hangzhou-based bottled water and soft drinks giant Nongfu Spring, has been named China’s richest person for the fourth consecutive year and the 21st richest globally, with a net worth of 450 billion yuan. Following him are Colin Huang, founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, and Tencent’s Pony Ma.

Furthermore, the list revealed a 5% increase in the number of billionaires worldwide, with their total wealth growing by 9%. Financial services and consumer goods emerged as the top sources of wealth, followed by the food and beverage industry and real estate.

With the massive explosion in AI over recent years, over half of new global wealth originated from AI, according to Hurun Report chairman and chief researcher Rupert Hoogewerf.

“For the first time, AI profoundly influenced the global rich list, with over half of the new wealth coming from AI,” he said.

Entrepreneurs associated with cloud computing, including those from Meta, Amazon, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Oracle, and Microsoft, saw significant wealth growth.

For the first time, U.S. chip giant Nvidia’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang saw a marked increase in wealth, entering the top 30 globally. Moreover, entrepreneurs from the semiconductor industry also saw rapid growth of wealth. Yuan Jiangtao, from Shenzhen semiconductor firm JLC, emerged as a fresh addition to this year’s list.