Who Is Zeng Yuqun? Elon Musk's Battery Partner Now Richer Than Alibaba's Jack Ma

Zeng Yuqun, the founder of one of the world's biggest electric-vehicle battery makers and a key supplier to Elon Musk's Tesla, has surpassed Alibaba's Jack Ma in terms of net worth.

The Chinese entrepreneur, 53, recently saw his net worth jump to $49.5 billion as shares of his company, Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), surged, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This meant he has overtaken the $48.1 billion net worth of Ma, the co-founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, the outlet noted.

Zeng ranked 19th on Forbes' China Rich List for 2020 and 52nd on the outlet's World's Billionaires List for 2021. In May, Forbes said he overtook business magnate Li Ka-shing as the wealthiest person in Hong Kong with a real-time net worth of $34.5 billion at the time, South China Morning Post reported.

This latest increase in net worth made Zeng one of the five richest people in Asia, a first for the CATL chairman. Experts said the shift is the latest sign of Chinese entrepreneurs building massive fortunes in the clean-energy sector.

“The billionaire ranking used to be dominated by real estate tycoons and later tech entrepreneurs, and now we are seeing more from the new energy sector,” Hao Gao, director of Tsinghua University’s NIFR Global Family Business Research Center, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

CATL reported revenue of 50.3 billion yuan ($7.3 billion) in 2020, according to Bloomberg. The company's share price surged more than 20-fold since CATL was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2017 and is up 59% for this year alone.

Investors are supporting stocks similar to CATL as China leads the market for electric vehicle sales. The country’s officials also announced a commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2060, the outlet said.

Zeng hails from Ningde in China's Fujian Province and holds a doctorate from the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Before starting his battery company, he worked for a state-owned shipbuilding company in Fujian, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

Less than a decade after starting CATL in 2011, Zeng was able to expand the company into becoming the largest global producer of rechargeable cells for plug-in vehicles. Aside from Tesla, CATL also supplies other EV manufacturers such as BMW, Volkswagen and Geely.

In a previous interview with Bloomberg, Zeng said he and Musk frequently exchange text messages about developments in technology and business.

“We're getting along well and he's a fun guy,” he said of the Tesla CEO.