Jerry Yang

Born in 1968, Jerry Yang is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer. After co-creating the Yahoo internet navigational guide in 1994, he co-founded the company Yahoo! Inc in 1995 with David Filo while both were studying at Stanford University. Yang did not complete his PhD in electrical engineering to become an entrepreneur “selling internet advertising”.Yang was Yahoo! CEO for almost two years until 2009, rejecting Microsoft’s takeover offer of $47.5bn in 2008. He eventually left the board in 2012 when he resigned due to strategic disagreements such as whether to sell all or part of the company. In 2016, Yahoo! completed the sale of its core operating business to Verizon for $5bn. Yang was also a board member of the Alibaba Group from 2006 to 2012. Yang met Jack Ma in 1997 when Ma was working as a government-employed tour guide. The former English teacher gave him a tour of the Great Wall of China. Ma went on to found Alibaba a few months after meeting Yang.After leaving Yahoo!, Yang founded AME Cloud Ventures to invest in multiple tech startups. As of November 2020, Yang’s net worth was valued at $2.3bn. In 2017, he and his wife pledged $25m to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the largest gift in the museum's history.