After leaving his teaching post, CJ Wang invented an automatic soy milk maker, setting him on a path in the home appliance sector that eventually led to a US$10.4 billion fortune.
Born in 1969 in Yantai, a city in China’s eastern province of Shandong, soy milk was a familiar part of Wang’s childhood. He would often help with chores after school, including the laborious task of making soymilk by repeatedly turning his uncle’s large stone mill.
He later studied electrical engineering at Beijing Jiaotong University and followed his parents into teaching after graduation.
"It was what my family did so I just naturally fell into teaching," he told Time magazine earlier this month in his first interview with international media. "But I always wanted to do something bigger and carve my own path."
Wang left his job in 1994 to pursue his passion for engineering. Convinced that soy milk and fried dough sticks would remain a staple in Chinese breakfasts, he invented the world’s first electric machine for making soy milk.
The machine was far from perfect or ideal, but it was a major breakthrough for Wang. That same year, he founded kitchen appliance brand Joyoung.
The company had sold more than one million soy milk makers by 2004 and went on to become popular for a wide range of affordable, reliable appliances from blenders to rice cookers, according to Bloomberg.
After more than two decades of growing Joyoung into a leading appliance brand in China, Wang began looking beyond the domestic market in the late 2010s. By then, the company was already listed in Shenzhen, but its name had little recognition in Western markets.
Instead of starting from scratch overseas, Wang opted to acquire an established player. That would be SharkNinja, which at the time was already building a following in the U.S. with its vacuums and blenders.
Wang was impressed by the firm’s strong products, room for expansion and especially its leadership—so much so that he asked CEO Mark Barrocas to stay on after the acquisition.
Still, Wang also saw plenty of areas for improvement: a relatively narrow product lineup; a sales model that leaned on traditional television infomercials and lacked a strong social-media presence or broader distribution network; and its reliance on a small number of Chinese suppliers for manufacturing, which left less room for flexibility and innovation.
Wang’s private equity firm bought a majority stake in SharkNinja in 2017 and placed it under his holding company, JS Global Lifestyle Co., which went public in Hong Kong in 2019.
He saw an opportunity to apply Joyoung’s expertise to the business, focusing on expanding its product range, improving its supply chain and updating its sales strategy. He also pushed SharkNinja to develop stronger in-house research and development capabilities.
With Wang’s backing and Barrocas’ leadership, SharkNinja rolled out one viral product after another and grew into a multibillion-dollar business with offerings designed for maximum social-media virality, particularly on TikTok.
The business is divided into two main brands: Shark for vacuums and beauty products and Ninja for kitchen appliances.
The company was later separated from JS Global and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange through a direct listing in 2023.
Wang, who serves as SharkNinja’s chairman, held about 35% of the company as of a May 2026 filing, alongside a 52% stake in JS Global Lifestyle, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which estimated his fortune at $10.4 billion as of Aug. 21.
Wang was Hong Kong’s second-highest-paid director in 2024, receiving a total remuneration package of more than HK$520 million (US$66.3 million), the South China Morning Post reported last year, citing financial data platform Webb-site.
Time described Wang as soft-spoken and shy. He told the magazine that he is very private, though he shared that golf and Macallan whisky are some of his interests outside business.
But amid heightened US-China trade tensions and scrutiny of Chinese investment in the U.S., Wang said he wanted to put his own story on the record and preempt speculation about his background and business interests.
"I just want to be ahead of the curve to proactively tell my story to mitigate any speculation," he said. "Because there's just not much out there about me." -- VnExpress
