Lei Jun

Lei was born on 16 December 1969 in Xiantao, in the underdeveloped countryside of Hubei. Both of his parents were teachers, which was a disgraced profession after the Cultural Revolution;^[4] his father made $7 per month.^[5] As a child, he was interested in electronics and liked disassembling and re-assembling radios, which was encouraged by his father.^[6] He made the first electric lamp in his village using two batteries, a bulb, a self-made wooden box, and some wires.^[7]

In 1987, he graduated from Mianyang Middle School (沔阳中学; now Xiantao Middle School) and began attending Wuhan University, from where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in computer science in 1991.^[2] During his last year of college, he founded his first company, Gundugoms. He also studied profusely and excelled at school.

In 1992, Lei joined Kingsoft as an engineer. He became the CEO of the company in 1998 and led it towards an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007. On 20 December 2007, he resigned as president and CEO of Kingsoft for "health reasons".^[8]

In 2000, Lei founded Joyo.com, an online bookstore, which he sold for US$75 million to Amazon.com in 2004.^[9] In 2005, he made a $1 million investment in YY; those shares were worth $129 million when the company became a public company via an initial public offering in 2012.^[10] In 2008, he became a chairman of UCWeb.^[11]

In 2010, Lei founded Xiaomi with multiple partners, including former Google executive Lin Bin.^[12] In 2023, Lei was among thirteen Xiaomi officials listed on the National Agency on Corruption Prevention's list of International Sponsors of War for maintaining business in Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.^[13]

In 2011, he co-founded Shunwei Capital (Chinese: 顺为资本), an investment company, via which he invests in companies in the e-commerce, social networking, and mobile industries.^[14] Also in 2011, he rejoined Kingsoft as chairman.^[8]

Lei and his wife Zhang Tong have two children.^[1] In 2013, Lei was appointed a delegate of the National People's Congress.^[15]

By 2017, Lei had donated $1 billion to charity, starting with a ¥140,000 donation in 1997 to his alma mater, Wuhan University. He later made donations to Zhuhai Charity, an organization that funds schools for migrants, the villagers of Yangchun for the renovation of schools and mudbrick houses and construction of cultural buildings, the victims of the 2013 Lushan earthquake, and was a participant in the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise funds for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.^[16] In 2021, he donated over $2.2 billion worth of Xiaomi shares to charity.^[17]

In 2023, Lei Jun in the 130th anniversary of Wuhan University, completed a personal donation of 1.3 billion yuan, for the university up to now the largest individual donation.^[18][19]

In 2014, Lei was named Businessman of the Year by Forbes.^[20] In 2015, he was named to the Time 100.^[21] In 2019, Lei was recognized as an "Outstanding Builder of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics", which caused the United States Department of Defense to add Xiaomi to a list of companies that support China’s military in January 2021.^[22]

• Lei Jun's Weibo Page