Ma Yun, also known as Jack Ma, is a Chinese businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder of the Jack Ma Foundation, and co-founder of Alibaba Group and Yunfeng Capital. As of May 2025, Ma's net worth was estimated at US$27.2 billion.
After taking the gaokao three times, Ma earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Hangzhou Normal University in 1988 and was assigned as an English and international trade lecturer at Hangzhou Dianzi University. Interested in internet entrepreneurship since the 1980s, he founded his first business, Hangzhou Hope Translation Agency, in 1994. The following year, he created the agency’s website and then resigned from the university to establish Hangzhou Hope Computer Services Co., Ltd., one of China’s earliest internet startups, which operated an online yellow pages service for Chinese companies. In 1996, Ma’s company was acquired by China Telecommunications Corporation. Following an unsatisfactory collaboration, he left the company the next year and went on to develop websites for China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.