Chinese businessman Ren Zhengfei is the current President and CEO of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and he has an estimated net worth of $1 billion as of March 2012 according to Forbes. He was named the Chief Executive Officer of Huawei in 1988. He founded the company in 1987 which sold telephone exchange equipment from Hong Kong.

With his estimated net worth of $1 billion, Ren was the 162nd richest person in China in 2011 and he was ranked 1153rd in the list of World Billionaires in 2012 according to Forbes. He has built his fortune with Huawei which is currently a multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong. It now has an annual revenue of $34 billion with 10% of the earnings intended for research and development. It has 20 R&D centers around the world and has more than 49,000 patent applications already filed. As of January 2013, it already has more than 144,000 employees.

Ren Zhengfei has spent much of his youth in a remote town in Guizhou Province before he graduated from the Chongqing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture in 1963. He has served in the People’s Liberation Army’s engineering corps for a decade then worked for Shenzhen South Sea Oil before he founded Huawei in 1987. He now owns 1.42% of the company’s share which is worth $450 million.