#38

Ma Huateng

Source of wealth: Online games

54 years Male Technology 🇨🇳 CN

Net Worth

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Earnings per second

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Biography

Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, is the chairman and CEO of Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings.

Tencent's popular social messaging app WeChat has over 1.4 billion monthly users.

Known at home for mobile games such as battle game Honor of Kings, Tencent is also one of the largest videogame publishers globally and has acquired a stake in U.S. videogame company Epic Games.

It has also invested in electric car maker Tesla and music-streaming service Spotify, which in turn has a stake in its Tencent Music.

Ma led research and development of internet paging system at China Motion Telecom Development before starting Tencent in 1998.

Perspective on their fortune

Gold

Everyday luxury

A Ma Huateng's fortune is equivalent to 335 of gold, but this may be difficult to value, as we don't usually have a handful of gold bars in our piggy bank.

A standard gold ring typically weighs between 4 and 7 grams. Let's say this one weighs 5 grams. It's usually 18k gold.

Based on today's gold price (not taking into account the jeweler's fee, shipping, or anything else), that gold ring would be worth $556.3

Ma Huateng could buy 89,353,800 gold rings. That's a lot of fingers and a lot of gifts!!

And if the number of rings is difficult to visualize, all these rings would need 16 trucks to transport them, But we can be almost certain that Ma Huateng will have enough left over to pay for the gas for those trucks.

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While billions of people struggle to access basic healthcare, education, and research, a single individual could fund entire national systems for centuries.

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Health

The price of life

Let's compare Ma Huateng's fortune with the healthcare spending of a huge country

Ma Huateng could fund the entire healthcare system of DR Congo with a population of over 105,800,000 of inhabitants for approximately 22.4 years.

But even if we compare their fortune to that of a rich country

At the other extreme, Ma Huateng could cover the health expenditure of Luxembourg, considered the world's most heavily invested health system, for 9.9 years

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Education

Buying the future

Lowest education spending

Ma Huateng could assume the entire cost of the education system of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with more than 243,000,000 inhabitants for 14.6 years.

Highest education spending

But not only could he assume the cost of a poor country, Luxembourg is considered the country with the highest per capita investment in education in the world, Ma Huateng could pay for it in full for 19.9 years.

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Research

The monopoly of progress

Lowest research spending

Ma Huateng could fully fund the state research budget of Pakistan, the fifth most populous country in the world with more than 260,000,000 of inhabitants, for 83.7 years.

Highest research spending

But even if we compare the total wealth of Ma Huateng with Israel, the country that currently invests the most per capita in research in the world, it could assume the total cost of the system for 1.9 years.