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Liang Wenfeng, founder of the Chinese frontier artificial intelligence lab DeepSeek, broke into the Hurun China Rich List for the first time, landing in seventh place with a fortune of US$41.7 billion (HK$325.26 billion).
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The global AI boom has pushed China's personal wealth higher, with ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming reclaiming the title of China’s richest person for the second time, with a record-high fortune of US$99.7 billion, Hurun China Rich List 2026 showed on Tuesday.
Zhang was followed by Nongfu Spring's (9633) founder Zhong Shanshan, with a fortune of US$61 billion, and CATL's (3750) founder Robin Zeng Yuqun, with US$57.3 billion.
Tencent's (0700) founder Pony Ma Huateng fell to fourth place with US$51.5 billion, and Midea's (0300) He Xiangjian and his family took fifth with US$46.1 billion.
Hong Kong's tycoon Li Ka-shing and his son Victor Li Tzar-kuoi, who hold a combined fortune of US$37.6 billion, maintained their ninth-place ranking.
Unitree founder Wang Xingxing is also among the newcomers, ranking 78th with a fortune of US$10.3 billion and marking the second-highest wealth among first-time entrants.
Other AI large model founders also had a strong debut, led by Liu Debing and Tang Jie of Z.AI (2513), with US$5.9 billion and US$4.1 billion in wealth, along with a US$ 3.4 billion fortune of MiniMax's (0100) Yan Junjie.
China saw 1,529 individuals with personal wealth above 5 billion yuan (HK$5.88 billion) in 2026, surpassing the previous record of 1,460 set in 2021, while the combined wealth increased 7 percent year-on-year to US$4.8 trillion.
