Yuan is the chairman and chief executive officer of Zoom Video Communications, the world’s biggest provider of video conferencing software to business. The San Jose-based company reported revenue of $4.1 billion in the year to Jan. 31, 2022. It began trading publicly on New York’s Nasdaq exchange in April 2019.
Eric Yuan's net worth of $5.94B can buy ...
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The majority of the Yuan's fortune is derived from his stake in Zoom Video Communications. He controls more than 13% of the company's shares directly and through entities associated with his family, according to its 2022 proxy statement. All of these shares are credited to Yuan in this analysis because of his status as Zoom’s founder and chief executive officer.
The company counts Uber Technologies and Delta Air Lines among its customers, and is the world's biggest provider by market share of video conferencing software to business, according to research by video conferencing hardware company Owl Labs.
The value of his cash and other assets is based on an analysis of dividends, market performance, insider transactions, taxes and charitable contributions.
Yuan declined to comment on his net worth.
Eric Yuan was born on Feb. 20, 1970 in China. He studied applied mathematics as an undergraduate at Shandong University of Science and Technology, and later obtained a master’s degree in engineering from China University of Mining and Technology.
In 1994, during a four-month stint working in Japan, he heard Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates give a speech about the internet. That experience inspired Yuan and prompted him to apply for a U.S. visa to tap into the nation’s emerging dot-com boom. Two years later, and after eight failed attempts, he obtained a visa.
Unable to speak English, Yuan focused on computer coding when he arrived in the U.S., according to a July 2018 interview he gave to Silicon Valley investment firm GGV Capital. He joined the online conferencing company WebEx in 1997 as one of its founding engineers and became a vice-president at Cisco Systems after it acquired the company for $3.2 billion in early 2007.
Yuan left Cisco Systems four years later to found Zoom Video. He first envisioned the concept of a video-focused conferencing company after repeatedly traveling 10 hours to see his girlfriend while they were college students in China.
The company filed for an initial public offering in March 2019 and listed on New York’s Nasdaq Global Select Market the following month, raising a total of $751 million.
Yuan lives in California with his wife and three children.