Net worth: $17.1 billion
Age: 44
Country: China
Source of wealth: Self-made; Tencent Holdings
Softward engineer Ma Huateng founded China's largest internet portal, Tencent Holdings, in 1998. He was 26. Ma's company has a number of successful and widely used platforms in its portfolio, including QQ, its instant-messaging service, which is one of the world's 10 largest websites; a mobile-texting service (WeChat) with 600 million users; a mobile-commerce product (WeChat Wallet); and an online-gaming community (Tencent Games), the largest in China.
Last year Ma made two big deals. In April, he bought a $400 million stake in Chinese classified-listings platform 58.com, of which Tencent already owned a 25% share. That same month he also bought a 15% stake in mobile-game maker Glu Mobile for $126 million.