John Tu is a co-founder and the president of Kingston Technology, the world's biggest independent maker of computer memory products. The Fountain Valley, California-based company manufactures drives and memory modules for servers, laptops and desktop PCs, and had revenue of $16.1 billion in 2022.
Tu controls a 50% stake in Kingston Technology and co-founder David Sun controls the balance, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times that was later confirmed by a company spokesperson.
Kingston is the world's biggest independent maker of computer memory products, according to the company's website. The closely held company had revenue of $16.1 billion in 2022, according to its 2022 sustainability report.
Kingston is valued using the average enterprise value-to-sales multiple of four publicly traded peers: Transcend Information Inc, Western Digital Corp, Adata Technology and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. The valuation was updated for 2022 results on July 7, 2023, leading to a rise of about $1.5 billion.
Tu and co-founder Sun sold 80% of Kingston to Softbank for $1.5 billion in 1996. The proceeds used in this analysis are reduced by $400 million to account for a $100 million bonus the pair distributed to Kingston employees after the sale and $300 million they deducted from the price after agreeing to renegotiate the sale terms. The details, reported by Bloomberg News at the time, were confirmed by Tu in a 2013 interview with Fortune magazine. The billionaires bought back the stake from Softbank for $450 million two years later.
David Leong, a spokesman for the company, declined to comment on the billionaire's net worth.
John Tu was born in Chongqinq, China on Aug. 12, 1941, the son of an official in China's Nationalist government. He moved to Shanghai with his parents in 1945, before going to Taiwan two years later as the Chinese civil war neared the coast. He moved in 1960 to Germany, where an uncle owned a Chinese restaurant, and began working at a shipbuilding factory before studying electrical engineering at Darmstadt University.
Tu moved to Arizona in 1970, opening a gift shop in Scottsdale before entering the real estate business as a developer. He became a U.S. citizen in 1972, and moved to Los Angeles where he met David Sun, an engineer who worked at electronic component maker Alpha Micro. The pair founded memory device maker Camintonn in 1982, and sold the business for $6 million to AST Research in 1986. The duo lost all of their savings in the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 before founding computer memory module maker Kingston Technology, where Tu remains chief executive officer.
Tu and Sun sold an 80 percent stake in the closely held company to Softbank for $1.4 billion in 1996, and distributed $100 million of the proceeds to their employees. They bought back Softbank's stake three years later for $450 million amid shrinking demand.
Tu is married with two children. He plays the drums in his band JT & Friends.