Jack Ma

Ma Yun (Chinese: 马云; pinyin: Mǎ Yún; born 10 September 1964), or more commonly referred as Jack Ma, is a Chinese businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder of the Jack Ma Foundation, and co-founder of Alibaba Group and Yunfeng Capital. As of May 2025, Ma's net worth was estimated at US$27.2 billion.

After taking the gaokao three times, Ma earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Hangzhou Normal University in 1988 and was assigned as an English and international trade lecturer at Hangzhou Dianzi University. Interested in internet entrepreneurship since the 1980s, he founded his first business, Hangzhou Hope Translation Agency, in 1994. The following year, he created the agency’s website and then resigned from the university to establish Hangzhou Hope Computer Services Co., Ltd., one of China’s earliest internet startups, which operated an online yellow pages service for Chinese companies. In 1996, Ma’s company was acquired by China Telecommunications Corporation. Following an unsatisfactory collaboration, he left the company the next year and went on to develop websites for China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. In 1999, he co-founded Alibaba Group, initially as a business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce marketplace and later expanded into a multinational technology conglomerate.

Ma has been regarded as a leading figure and global ambassador of Chinese business. His influence declined after Chinese regulators halted the anticipated initial public offering (IPO) of his digital payments company, Ant Group, in 2020, following his criticism of China’s financial regulators for prioritizing risk control over innovation.