Author：Fan Jiao
Editor: Michelle X. Li
ABSTRACT
Since the 1960s, Chinese immigrants have arrived in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley; many more have come from the mainland since the eighties. In the last four decades, many of them have become high tech entrepreneurs and engineers who contributed a great deal to Silicon Valley and the US economy. The purpose of this article is to introduce 54 of these leaders to the audience.
California and Silicon Valley Immigration Demographics
According to statistics from 2017, four-tenths of California’s immigrants are from Asia. Major countries include China (969,000), the Philippines (857,000), Vietnam (524,000) and India (507,000). Chinese immigrants have come to America since the 1960s. There were more immigrants from Taiwan earlier on, and since the 1980s, the number of engineers from the Chinese mainland has gradually increased. The Silicon Valley runs from the southern end of San Francisco Bay in Northern California to the east along Interstate 280 through San Mateo County, ending in Santa Clara County.
The demographics of the top five Asian minorities in the four counties in 2010 are in the table below: [I-2, I-3, I-4, I-5]:
| Chinese | Pilipino | Vietnamese | Indians | White | |
| San Francisco | 21.4% | 4.5% | 1.6% | 1.2% | 48.1% |
| Alameda | 9.7% | 5.5% | 2.0% | 4.8% | 43% |
| San Mateo | 9% | 9.8% | 0.5% | 1.9% | 53.4% |
| Santa Clara | 8.6% | 4.9% | 7.1% | 6.6% | 35.2% |
Silicon Valley Chinese American Leaders Summary
Among the 54 celebrities presented in this article,
- 29 of them are the President/CEO/Chairman of the Board of Directors of their companies-: Pehong Chen[4], Daniel Ha/夏[7], Kevin Chou[8], Tony Hsieh/謝家華[9], Jameson Hsu[10], Charles Huang[11], Justin Kan[12], Kenneth Lin[13], Ben Silbermann[15], Greg Tseng[16], Yishan Wong/黃易山[17], Jerry Yang/杨致远[18], Eric Yuan/袁征[19], Min Zhu/朱敏[21],Ken Xie/谢青[28], Chi-Foon Chan/陳志寬[32], Weili Dai/戴伟立[33], Jensen Huang/黃仁勳[35], David K. Lam[36], Lisa Su/苏姿丰[37], Lip-Bu Tan/陈立武[38], Stanley Wang/王大壯[39], Andrew T. Yang[40], Bing Yeh/叶炳辉[42], John S. Chen/程守宗[45], Alfred Chuang/庄思浩[47], Robert T. Huang[48], Feng Deng/邓锋[49], Alfred Lin[50], and Geoff Yang[54]. Nine of them are members of the C-100.
- 18 are COO/CTO/CFO/Regional CEO/Vice President: Kai-fu Lee/李开复 [1], Li Fei-fei李飞飞 [2], Steve Chen/陈士骏 [5], Mei Ling [14], Amy Chang [22], Anson Chen [23], Irving Tan [25], Victor and Janie Tsao [26], Stacy Wu [27], Dr. David Yen [30], Dr. Wei Yen/顏維 [31], Jean Hu [34], Jeff Ma [48], David Wang/王啟尚 [41], Albert Y.C. Yu [43], Yan Ke [52], and Hans Tung/童士豪 [53]).
- It is important to note that Li Feifei, Steve Chen, Daniel Ha/Xia, Kevin Chou, Jameson Hsu, Charles Huang, Justin Kan, Kenneth Lin, Ben Silbermann, Greg Tseng, and others are either of 1.5 generation or second-generation Chinese Americans.
This article is in alphabetical order of names in each technology category. Bio/Pharmaceuticals is excluded.
Committee of 100/C-100 is a non-partisan leadership organization of prominent Chinese Americans in business, government, academia, and the arts.
Silicon Valley Review
In 1957, the U.S. government established NASA to start a huge space race triggered by the successful launch of a Russian satellite. When NASA opened at Moffett Field in Mountain View, the only company that could make electronics for space capsules was Fairchild Semiconductor, 35 miles away. Gordon Moor, a founder of Fairchild, later became the founder of Intel, a pioneer in Silicon Valley’s semiconductor silicon chip industry.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, personal computers dominated the Valley’s high-tech industry, leading to the boom in Workstations, SGI (Silicon Graphics, Inc.), Sun Microsystems, Network Infrastructure (Network Devices), Cisco, Juniper, and Database companies, Sybase, Oracle, and others that led Silicon Valley into the Internet age prior to 2000.
Since the turn of the 21st century, Internet apps have been making rapid progress (Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc.).
Today it is the Enabling Technologies and semiconductor industries such as Artificial Intelligence/Crypto/Blockchain that are currently playing a huge role in the development of hardware/software in the Valley.
Enabling Technologies (1-3)
Both Dr. Li Fei-fei and Dr. Kai-fu Lee are well-known experts in artificial intelligence, having served as presidents of Microsoft/Google China (for an “unprecedented” Google salary) and pioneered machine learning. Here we would only talk about Dr. Li Feifei (李飞飞).
Dr. Li was born in Chengdu, China in 1976. At the age of 12, she moved to the United States with her father. She received a scholarship to Princeton University in 1995 and a bachelor’s degree in advanced physics in 1999.
During her time at Princeton, she returned home most weekends to work in her parents’ dry-cleaning shop.
She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2005. She has published nearly 180 research papers on AI, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Cognitive Neuroscience and Computational Neuroscience. From 2005 to August 2009, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University, prior to joining Stanford University as an assistant professor in 2009.
She was promoted to a full professor in 2017 and was the director of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) from 2013 to 2018. From January 2017 to the fall of 2018, she joined Google Cloud as the chief scientist and vice president of AI/ML while on sabbatical leave from Stanford. She is described as a “pioneer of artificial intelligence” and a “researcher who brought humans into artificial intelligence”.
Internet Application (4-20)
Yahoo founder Yang Zhiyuan (杨致远), Google YouTube founder Steve Chen (陈士骏), Zoom founder and CEO Yuan Zheng (袁征), and Pinterest founder and CEO Ben Silbermann are well-known in this field. Additionally, a number of second-generation Chinese Americans have been CEO/President of well-run small and medium-sized companies, including Kenneth Lin of Credit Karma/Intuit, Kevin Chou of Kabam, Zappos’ 謝家華, Justin Kan of Atrium, Justin.tv, Twitch, and Soccam.
Kenneth Lin immigrated to the United States from China with his parents when he was 4 years old. To pay for his tuition at Boston University, his parents worked in casinos and restaurants. Since the late 1990s, he has worked in the credit card industry. In 2006, when he was frustrated with the time-consuming process of getting his credit score, he was inspired to set up Credit Karma. In an interview with The American Banker, he said the “ultimate goal” was to make the credit process easier, with the aim of “enabling the application process to be two or three clicks, not 20 or 30 minutes”. By 2015, the company had more than 40 million users. According to Fortune, the company has also performed well in raising venture capital, with a valuation of $3.5 billion. Despite successfully finding investors, he expressed a desire to avoid a quick listing to ensure slow and steady growth. In December 2020, Intuit acquired the company for $4.7 billion.
Chen Shijun (Steven Chen) immigrated to the United States from Taipei, Taiwan when he was eight years old and received a degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002. He was an early employee at Facebook; he then left a few months later to found YouTube. In 2005, he and two of his peers founded YouTube with Chen as chief technology officer. On October 16, 2006, they sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion. As part of the sale, Chen acquired 625,366 shares of Google and another 68,721 trusts. On May 15, 2011, Chen was honored in Asian Scientist Magazine as one of the “15 Scientists of Interest in Asia”. He married Park Ji-hyun/Jamie Chen in 2009 and now lives in San Francisco with his two children. Mr. and Mrs. Chen are major supporters of the Museum of Asian Art in San Francisco, and Jamie was appointed a trustee in July 2012. He is a member of the C-100.
Ben Silbermann was born in 1982 and grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. His parents, Jane Wang and Neil Silbermann, are local ophthalmologists. He graduated from Yale University with a degree in political science in 2003. Prior to Pinterest’s establishment in March 2010, he worked for Google‘s online advertising team. After working for the company for a while, he left and began designing his own iPhone app with college friends/co-founders and developed a shelf product that eventually became known as Pinterest. Pinterest‘s origins stem from his childhood love of collections. Nine years after founding Pinterest, the company made its initial public debut in April 2019, valued at about $12 billion, exceeding expectations. He lives in San Francisco. As of 2018, Forbes reported he is estimated to be worth $1.6 billion.
Network Infrastructure (21-31)
Ken Xie (谢青) and Michael Xie are well-known Chinese brothers in computer workstations and network equipment companies that have large numbers of Chinese Americans. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the Chinese-born, Tsinghua-educated brothers are now billionaires in a stake in Fortinet, the Silicon Valley cybersecurity firm they co-founded nearly 20 years ago. Ken Xie/Xie Qing, the older of the two brothers, was a professional volleyball player in China before studying electrical engineering at Stanford University while starting his first network security company. After co-founding and leaving NetScreen, an online security company, he co-founded Fortinet in 2000. Juniper bought NetScreen in 2004 in an all-stock deal worth $4 billion. A decade and a half later, Fortinet‘s $13 billion valuation surpassed Juniper‘s. Mr. Ken Xie is the largest individual shareholder, holding a 7.4% stake worth $1 billion. He also collected more than $40 million through stock trading, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. He is a member of the C-100. Michael Xie, president and chief technology officer, previously worked as a software architect at NetScreen. He owns 7.1% of the shares and has collected more than $70 million through stock trading.
Dr. David Yen and Dr. Wei Yen/顏維, brothers and graduates of National Taiwan University, are pioneers in the field of computer workstations and network equipment. David received his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and completed a management program at Stanford University Business School. After nearly two decades as Executive Vice President of Sun Microsystems, he spent more than three years as Executive Vice President and General Manager at Juniper, and then as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center Business Group at Cisco.
Younger brother Dr. Wei Yen holds a Ph.D. in Operating Systems and Artificial Intelligence Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He was well received and appreciated by SGI founder Dr. James Clark and served as senior vice president for a decade, managing teams consisting of almost all Caucasian individuals. His leadership style is very strict, and his subordinates are often afraid of being scolded by him. Behind the scenes, they jokingly called him the “King of Kings/阎王”. Under his leadership, SGI shares grew faster than their main rival Sun Microsystems back then. He later founded ArtX that was acquired by ATI in February 2000 for $400 million. He is currently the founder and Chairman of The Board of Directors of AiLive, a software tool company that uses the Wii remote control in partnership with Nintendo.
Semiconductors/Storage (32-43)
Because the semiconductor industry has been the most prevalent in Silicon Valley for many years, Chinese American leaders play important roles in many companies.
Lisa Su (苏姿丰), CEO and President of Advanced Micro Devices, has played an important role in driving her company’s diversification beyond the PC market, including working with Microsoft and Sony to place chips in Xbox One and PS4 consoles to counter Intel’s dominance of the CPU. Since 2016, the company has reported strong revenue growth, and its share price has soared, with its new chips directly threatening the markets of Intel and Nvidia. Market watchers believe she will continue to steer AMD on the path to success and prosperity.
Renxun (Jensen) Huang (黃仁勳) co-founded Nvidia on his 30th birthday in 1993 and is now CEO and President. Nvidia‘s GPU and related AI chips are market leaders. As of 2016, he owns a portion of Nvidia‘s stock, worth about $1.3 billion. He earned $24.6 million as CEO in 2007 and in 2008, Forbes named him the 61st highest-paid CEO in the United States and one of Asia’s richest men. In 2008, he invested $30 million in Stanford University, his alma mater, to establish the Huang Renxun Engineering College Center.
Software (44-49)
In the field of software, there are a lot of Chinese engineers and managers; here we only mention John S. Chen (程守宗) who is known as the famous “Doctor Hua Yu sent from God (神医华佗)” in Silicon Valley. His biggest challenge as CEO of Sybase in 1998 was that Oracle, a major rival, was one step ahead of them: enterprise became their mainstream database earlier. He set out to reinvent Sybase as a “driver of wireless enterprise”, on the one hand OEM Sybase to Microsoft, to gain access to the enterprise, on the other hand, to add embedded interfaces, OEM IBM and CA (Computer Associates) to optimize the application of enterprise management software to its databases. Under his leadership, the company achieved 55 consecutive quarters of good earnings. As a result, Sybase was successfully acquired by SAP AG in 2010.
He was appointed as chief executive and president of BlackBerry in November 2013, leading the company’s successful transition from hardware company to software leader, and once again rescued a company facing enormous challenges. He has been one of the major donors to the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra since 2006. He is a member of the C-100.
Venture Capital Investors (50-54)
Interestingly, many Chinese VCs (investors) not only have “Golden Touch” on investment targets, but also have the ability to run companies. For example, venture capital investors Deng Feng and Yan Ke were former Netscreen co-founders and CEOs.
Alfred Lin does not only have the ability to run a company, but also has the ability to foresee the future of companies. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s degree in Statistics from Stanford University. Eight months after joining Link Exchange as CFO, the company sold it to Microsoft for $265 million. From 2005 to 2010, he served as chairman, COO and CFO of Zappos, and sold it to Amazon in 2009 for $1.2 billion. He left Zappos in 2010 to join Sequoia Capital as a partner. He has invested in Airbnb, Uber (listed), and so on.
1, Kai-Fu Lee (李开复)： Apple，SGI CTO，Microsoft China、Google China CEO (got an “unprecedented” top-of-the-line salary from Google)
2, Fei-Fei Li (李飞飞)： Pioneer of artificial intelligence, director of Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University, chief scientist and vice president of Google Cloud Computing/ML
3, Andrew Ng (吴恩达)：Professor of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at Stanford University; his machine learning courses are extremely popular.
4, Pehong Chen：BroadVision Founder, Chairman of the Board, President & CEO and member of C- 100
5, Steve Chen (陈士骏)：Google YouTube’s Co-founder and CTO，a major contributor of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and member of C-100.
6，邱泽堃(Ben Chiu)：founder of killerapp.com，that was acquired by CNET Networks Inc.
7， Daniel Ha/夏：Korean Chinese descendant, co-founder and CEO of the blog review platform Disqus
8，Kevin Chou：Co-founder and CEO of Kabam, a video game company
9, 謝家華 (Tony Hsieh) ：CEO of Zappos, a line footwear and clothing company
10, Jameson Hsu：CEO and co-founder of cartoon network platform Mochi Media
11, Charles/Kai Huang：co-founders/CEO of Redoctan and Guitar Hero
12, Justin Kan：CEO and co-founder of legal technology company Atrum, co-founders of real-time video platform Justin.tv, Twitch and mobile social video app Socialcam
13, Kenneth Lin：founder and CEO, Credit Karma
14, Mei Ling：VP Engineering of Punh
15, Ben Silbermann：co-founder and CEO of 2019-IPOed Pinterest
16, Greg Tseng: The co-founder and current CEO of the social networking site Tagged the former CEO of TrumpStart Technologies.
17, 黃易山(Yishan Wong)：A special editor at Forbes magazine and former chief executive of Reddit, a well-known social media technology company.
18, 杨致远 (Jerry Yang) ：Yahoo! co-founder and former CEO. Created the start-up investment firm AME Cloud Ventures, Alibaba‘s board of directors and members of the C-100
19, 袁征 (Eric Yuan) ：Founder and CEO of Zoom Video Communications, a miraculously IPOed in 2019, a former VP of Cisco
20, Jennifer Yang Weeden：Business Development lead for Marketing Solutions business at Microsoft/LinkedIn
21, 朱敏 (Min Zhu)：co-founder and former CEO and CTO WebEx，acquired by Cisco in 2007
22, Amy Chang：board of directors for Procter & Gamble and SambaNova, and has previously served on the boards of Cisco, Splunk and Informatica
23, Anson Chen：Founder and Vice Chairman of Interactive Video Exchange, former Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Network Management and Services Technology Group, former Vice President of Juniper, and Former Vice President and General Manager of Motorola
24, Dr. Tony Li ：A well-known network protocol engineer with more than 30 IETF drafts, engineer at Arista and a former distinguished engineer of Cisco, Juniper and Procket Networks
25, Irving Tan： Cisco’s Chairman, Asia Pacific, Japan and China (APJC)
26, Victor and Janie Tsao：co-founded Linksys, a pioneer in home user networks, and sold the company to Cisco in 2003 for $500 million, former senior vice presidents at Cisco
27, Stacy Wu：Chief Marketing Officer at Everbridge, formally Senior Vice President, Global Marketing of Fortinet
28, 谢青 (Ken Xie) ： Co-founded NetScreen acquired by Juniper Networks in 2004 for $4 billion and Fortinet, CEO of Fortinet, and a member of the C-100
29, Michael Xie：Co-founder, CEO and CTO of Fortinet
30, Dr. David Yen：Senior VP of Engineering of Sun Microsystems，Juniper’s Executive VP and GM, Fiber and Switching Business, Senior VP and GM, Cisco Data Center Business Unit
31, Dr. Wei Yen/顏維：Founder and Chairman of AiLive, former Senior VP of SGI（Silicon Graphics Inc. and CEO of MIPS Technologies. Founded ArtX bought by ATI in Feb 2000 for $400 million
32, Dr. Chi-Foon Chan/陳志寬：CEO and President of Synopsys, Inc. member of C-100
33, 戴伟立 (Weili Dai) ：co-founder, former CEO and President of Marvell Technology Group, The only female co-founder of a large semiconductor company and a member of the C-100. In 2015, named the 95th richest woman in the world by Forbes
34, Jean Hu：CFO of Marvell Technology, board of directors, Fortinet
35, 黃仁勳 (Jensen Huang) ： Co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has been President and CEO since its inception. In 2008, Forbes named him the 61st highest-paid CEO in the United States and one of Asia’s richest men.
36, 林杰屏 (David K. Lam) ：Chairman, Multibeam Corporation（Santa Clara, founded Lam Research Corporation in 1980, Investor and business consultant for high-growth technology companies for David Lam Group
37, 苏姿丰 (Lisa Su) ：CEO & President for AMD since 2014. She was VP of Vice President of IBM Semiconductor Research and Development Center
38, 陈立武 (Lip-Bu Tan)：CEO and President, Cadence Design Systems and member of C-100
39, 王大壯 (Stanley Wang) ：Founder, President & CEO, Pantronix Corporation and member of C-100
40, Andrew T. Yang：currently a private investor and a member of the Board of Directors. A former CEO and Chairman of Apache Design System that sold to ANSYS for $320 million.
41，王啟尚 (David Wang) ：Senior VP of AMD Radeon Technologies Group
42, 叶炳辉 (Bing Yeh) ：founder/COO/Chairman of Greenliant Systems from 2010. Co-founded Silicon Storage Technology in 1989 as CEO and Chairman
43. Albert Y.C. Yu：Microprocessor Architect, Senior Vice President, Intel
44, 程守宗 (John S. Chen) ：Executive Chairman & CEO, BlackBerry Ltd., Board member of Wells Fargo＆Company and Walt Disney Company, member of C-100, former CEO and President of Sybase
45，Tracy Chou：high-tech female advocate and software engineer for Pinterest，Quora
46, 庄思浩 (Alfred Chuang) ：Former CEO and Chairman, BEA Systems that was acquired by Oracle in April, 2008. Founder and CEO, Magnet Systems，Inc.
47, Robert T. Huang：Founder and Chairman of board, SYNNEX Corporation
48, Jeff Ma：Vice President, Microsoft Bay Area
49, 邓锋 (Feng Deng) ：The founding managing director of Northern Lights Ventures (NLVC), co-founded NetScreen, served as vice president of engineering, chief strategy officer and board member, and was acquired by Juniper in 2004 for $4 billion.
50, Alfred Lin：Venture capital investor at Sequoia Capital, former CFO and COO of Zappos.com until 2010. Helped set up Zappos and was subsequently acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion
51, Ellen Pao：Co-founded Project Include Investors, a diversified consulting nonprofit, former partner at Kapor Capital, interim chief executive of social media technology company Reddit, and a former investment partner at Kleiner Perkins
52, Yan Ke: co-founded Northern Lights Ventures (NLVC) with Deng Feng in 2005 and NetScreen in 1997 as its vice president and chief architect, and former Vice President of Juniper
53, 童士豪 (Hans Tung) ：GGV Capital’s Executive Partner, which focuses on global investments in consumer Internet, e-commerce and the Internet of Things, was included in Forbes Midas for the seventh consecutive time between 2013 and 2019
54, Geoff Yang：co-founder and Chairman of Redpoint Ventures. He invested various successful startups including Arista，Ask.com，Foundry Networks，Excite，Juniper，Myspace and TiVo
Annotation:
I-1 Public Policy Institute of California
I-2 Demographics of San Francisco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco
I-3 Demographics of San Mateo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Mateo_County,_California
I-4 Demographics of Santa Clara
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County,_California
I-5 Demographics of Alameda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_County,_California
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