Colin Huang

Huang was born in 1980 to factory worker parents on the outskirts of Hangzhou, a city in China's eastern province of Zhejiang.[6] Huang attended secondary school at Hangzhou Foreign Language School.

At the age of 18, Huang began studying computer science at the Zhejiang University. In his freshman year, he was selected as a fellow at the Melton Foundation, established by VeriFone founder Bill Melton.[7] Huang graduated with a master's degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin in 2004.[8]

Huang joined Google as an intern, and then started working as an engineer in 2004.[9] He also interned at Microsoft.[8]

After resigning from Google in 2007, Huang started ecommerce site Ouku. He sold it for $2.2m in 2010.[5]

Following the July 2018 initial public offering of Pinduoduo on NASDAQ, Huang's 47% stake was valued at $14 billion, making him the 13th richest person in China.[1][8]

As of July 2, 2020, it is reported that from a June 30 filing that Colin Huang has cut his PDD stake down to 29.4% from 43.3%.[10] ON July 1, 2020, Huang stepped down as CEO but will continue as Chairman.[11]

The Shanghai-based company Pinduoduo, also known as PDD, was founded in 2015 and reported revenue of 1.4 billion yuan ($280 million) in 2017. In 2019, its revenue was $4.33 billion dollars. It became publicly traded following an initial public offering in the United States in July 2018, raising $1.6 billion.[12]