BUSINESSPEOPLE from Taiwan

Top 6

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Taiwanese Businesspeople of all time. This list of famous Taiwanese Businesspeople is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Terry Gou (b. 1950)

With an HPI of 56.90, Terry Gou is the most famous Taiwanese Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 25 different languages on wikipedia.

Terry Gou (Chinese: 郭台銘; pinyin: Guō Táimíng; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Koeh Tâi-bêng; born 18 October 1950) is a Taiwanese billionaire businessman and politician. Gou is the founder and former chairman and chief executive officer of Foxconn, the world's largest contract manufacturer of electronics. Founded in 1974, Foxconn grew to become an international business empire, becoming the largest private employer and exporter in mainland China with a workforce of 1.2 million. As of 2024, Gou had a net worth of US$10.4 billion. Beginning in 2016, speculation surrounding Gou's political ambitions arose ahead of the 2020 presidential election. In 2019, Gou resigned from Foxconn and joined the Kuomintang (KMT) to run for president, declaring he was instructed by the sea goddess Mazu in a dream to contest the election. Gou ultimately lost the election, coming in second in the Kuomintang primary. After leaving the party following the 2019 primary, Gou rejoined in 2023 and announced his intention to run for president in the 2024 presidential election, but after running as an independent candidate, he ended his campaign in late November 2023. Once described as an "old friend" by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Gou has been characterized as friendly to Mainland business interests during his political and business career. In December 2022, Gou was credited with helping to successfully lobby the Xi Jinping Administration to ease zero-COVID rules implemented during the pandemic. On foreign policy, Gou has criticized the Taiwan independence movement and has called for a deescalation of Sino–American tensions. Owing to his business background and image as a political outsider, Gou has been compared in international media to former U.S. president Donald Trump.

2. Jensen Huang (b. 1963)

With an HPI of 54.32, Jensen Huang is the 2nd most famous Taiwanese Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang (Chinese: 黃仁勳; pinyin: Huáng Rénxūn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: N̂g Jîn-hun; born February 17, 1963) is a Taiwanese-born American billionaire businessman, electrical engineer, and philanthropist who is the founder, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nvidia. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Huang moved from Taiwan to the United States in his childhood. After receiving a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, he co-founded Nvidia in 1993 at the age of 30. In June 2024, Nvidia became the largest company in the world by market capitalization. As of November 2024, Forbes estimated Huang's net worth at $130 billion, making him the 9th richest person in the world.

3. Steve Chen (b. 1978)

With an HPI of 50.68, Steve Chen is the 3rd most famous Taiwanese Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 38 different languages.

Steve Chen (Chinese: 陳士駿; Wade–Giles: Chen Shih-chün; born August 25, 1978) is a Taiwanese-American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur who is one of the co-founders and previous chief technology officer of the video-sharing website YouTube. After he co-founded the company AVOS Systems, Inc. and built the video-sharing app MixBit, he joined Google Ventures in 2014.

4. Kai-Fu Lee (b. 1961)

With an HPI of 46.69, Kai-Fu Lee is the 4th most famous Taiwanese Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Kai-Fu Lee (traditional Chinese: 李開復; simplified Chinese: 李开复; pinyin: Lǐ Kāifù; born December 3, 1961) is a Taiwanese businessman, computer scientist, investor, and writer. He is currently based in Beijing, China. Lee has worked as an executive, first at Apple, then SGI, Microsoft, and Google. He became the focus of a 2005 legal dispute between Google and Microsoft, his former employer, due to a one-year non-compete agreement that he signed with Microsoft in 2000 when he became its corporate vice president of interactive services. He works in the Chinese internet sector and was the founding director of Microsoft Research Asia, serving from 1998 to 2000; and president of Google China, serving from July 2005 through September 4, 2009. After resigning from his post, he founded Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm. He created a website, Wǒxuéwǎng (Chinese: 我学网; lit. 'I-Learn Web') dedicated to helping young Chinese people in their studies and careers and wrote "10 Letters to Chinese College Students". He is a micro-blogger in China, in particular on Sina Weibo, where he has over 50 million followers. In his 2018 book AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, Lee describes how China is rapidly moving forward to become the global leader in artificial intelligence (AI), and may well surpass the United States, because of China's demographics and its amassing of huge data sets. In a September 28, 2018 interview on the PBS Amanpour program, he stated that AI, with all its capabilities, will never be capable of creativity or empathy.

5. Jerry Yang (b. 1968)

With an HPI of 46.05, Jerry Yang is the 5th most famous Taiwanese Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 37 different languages.

Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (Chinese: 楊致遠; pinyin: Yáng Zhìyuǎn; born Yang Chih-Yuan; November 6, 1968) is an American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. and founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures. As of July 2023, Yang has a net worth of $2.5 billion.

6. Lisa Su (b. 1969)

With an HPI of 45.99, Lisa Su is the 6th most famous Taiwanese Businessperson.  Her biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su (Chinese: 蘇姿丰; born 1969) is an American billionaire business executive, computer scientist, and electrical engineer who is the president, chief executive officer (CEO), and chair of the semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Su was born in Taiwan and moved to the United States as a child. After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she worked at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale Semiconductor in engineering and management positions. She is known for her work developing silicon-on-insulator semiconductor manufacturing technologies and more efficient semiconductor chips during her time as vice president of IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center. Su was appointed president and CEO of AMD in October 2014, after joining the company in 2012 and holding roles such as senior vice president of AMD's global business units and chief operating officer. She previously served on the board of Cisco Systems and is currently on the board of the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association, in addition to being a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Recognized with a number of awards and accolades, she was named Executive of the Year by EE Times in 2014 and one of the World's Greatest Leaders in 2017 by Fortune. She became the first woman to receive the IEEE Robert Noyce Medal in 2021. During her tenure as CEO of AMD, the market capitalization of AMD has grown from roughly $3 billion to more than $200 billion. AMD also overtook Intel in market capitalization for the first time. In 2024, Su was selected the Fellow of Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).