Jack Ma

, with a net worth of $30.1 billion, Ma is the sixth-wealthiest person in China, as well as the 50th wealthiest person in the world, ranked by Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Jack Ma Yun (born September 10, 1964) is a Chinese business magnate, investor and philanthropist.

He is the co-founder of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate.

In addition, Ma is also the co-founder of Yunfeng Capital, a Chinese private equity firm.

Ma was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang on September 10, 1964 as Ma Yun.

He became interested in learning the English language as a young boy and began practicing it with English-speaking visitors who frequented the Hangzhou International Hotel.

Ma's grandfather served as a security guard during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

At the age of 12, Ma bought a pocket radio and began listening to English radio stations frequently.

For nine years, Ma rode 17 mi on his bicycle every day to work as a tour guide of Hangzhou for foreigners in order to practice his English.

He became pen pals with one of those foreigners, who nicknamed him "Jack" because he found it hard to pronounce his Chinese name.

When Ma was 13 years old, he was forced to transfer to Hangzhou No. 8 Middle School as he kept getting in fights.

In his primary school days, Ma struggled scholastically, and it took two years for him to gain acceptance at an ordinary Chinese high school, as he only got 31 points in mathematics on the Chinese high school entrance exam.

The rise and expansion of the software and personal-computer industries during the 1980s captured Ma's attention, prompting him to develop an interest in the nascent internet industry.

In 1980, while he was riding his bike to practice English with tourists, he met Ken Morley, who was traveling with his family with the Australia-China Friendship Society.

Ken's son, David, became pen pals with Ma and kept in touch after the family left China.

Years later, the Morleys hosted Ma in Australia, changing the course of his life completely.

In early 2023, Ma travelled to Melbourne to visit the Morleys and bequeathed $26 million to the University of Newcastle as a philanthropic gesture, which is located in the Morley family's hometown.

Regarding his 2023 visit, Ma said: "Those 29 days in Newcastle were crucial in my life. Without those 29 days, I would never have been able to think the way I do today."

In 1982, at the age of 18, Ma failed the nation-wide Chinese college entrance exam on his initial attempt, obtaining only 1 point in mathematics.

Afterwards, he and his cousin applied to be waiters at a nearby hotel.

His cousin was hired, but Ma was rejected on the grounds that he was "too skinny, too short, and in general, protruded a bad physical appearance that may have potentially ended up hurting the restaurant's image and possibly tarnishing its reputation."

In 1983, Ma failed his college entrance exam for the second time.

However, his math score improved, increasing from his previous attempt to 19 points.

The following year, Ma remained relentlessly determined to pursue higher education despite strong opposition from his family, who wanted him to choose a different career path as an alternative option.

Undeterred, he decided to take the entrance exam a third time in 1984.

On his third attempt, Ma scored 89 points on the math section, marking a significant improvement from his previous two attempts.

Nonetheless, the minimum benchmark entrance requirement would have rendered Ma ineligible to be accepted into university, since his score was five points below the standardized minimum threshold for him to qualify.

However, Ma's academic fortunes would change since the enrollment target for prospective majors in Hangzhou Normal University's Department of English was not met, as some prospective students had the opportunity to be accepted and promoted into it, with Ma himself having ended up being promoted to the department's foreign language major.

Born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Ma earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in English upon graduating from Hangzhou Normal University in 1988.

He became an English lecturer and international trade lecturer at Hangzhou Dianzi University following graduation.

Demonstrating such a propensity led him into the realm of internet entrepreneurship where he embarked on establishing his first business in 1994, subsequently resulting in the formation of a second company upon acquiring a deeper understanding of the internet's emergence and the promising commercial prospects it offered.

From 1998 to 1999, he resigned from China Telecommunications Corporation, later starting the Alibaba Group with his colleagues in 1999.

The company was initially founded as a B2B e-commerce marketplace website, yet the company later expanded into a wide range of industry domains across the Chinese economy, including e-commerce, high-technology, and online payment solutions.

In 2017, Ma was ranked second in the annual "World's 50 Greatest Leaders" list by Fortune.

He has widely been considered as an informal global ambassador in Chinese business circles, and has continued to remain an influential figure in the Chinese business community and scene of startup companies.

In September 2018, he announced that he would retire from Alibaba and pursue educational work, philanthropy, and environmental causes; the following year, Daniel Zhang succeeded him as executive chairman.

In 2019, Forbes Magazine named Ma in its list of "Asia's 2019 Heroes of Philanthropy" for his humanitarian and philanthropic work supporting underprivileged communities in China, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East.

In April 2021, Jack Ma ranked 26th in the "2021 Forbes Global Rich List" with a fortune of $48.4 billion USD.

In July 2021, Jack Ma led Alibaba Group to top the 2021 China Charity List with a total cash donation of 3.22 billion yuan.

In 2020, the Chinese government stopped plans for an IPO called for the digital payment solutions company Ant Group, a company that he founded after he delivered a speech that criticized Chinese financial regulators for putting too much priority in minimizing risk.