(ECNS) -- Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, has been listed as Asia's wealthiest tech billionaire by Forbes, securing seventh place globally.
Forbes on Wednesday released its list of the 100 richest tech billionaires on the planet with Bill Gates, also the world's richest man, topping the list overall, with a net worth of $79.6 billion.
Four Chinese entrepreneurs are among the top 20, with Jack Ma ranking seventh with a net worth of $22.7 billion.
Ma Huateng, the man behind China's wildly popular instant messaging service QQ and mobile chat app WeChat, is 13th with $16.1 billion.
He is followed by Chinese search engine architect Robin Li, with $15.3 billion, and Xiaomi's Lei Jun, who leads the Asian consumer electronics market, with $13.2 billion.
Rival online shopping giant JD.com's Liu Qiangdong has also made the Forbes list, along with Wang Tao, founder of Shenzhen-based DJI Innovations. Wang's enterprise makes up 70 percent of the global unmanned aerial vehicle market.
An impressive 20 billionaires from the Chinese mainland and one from Hong Kong have made the list, which means China ranks second to the U.S., which has 51 on the list, in terms of the number of tech billionaires a country can claim.
Meanwhile, only eight billionaires from Europe, two from the Middle East and one from Latin America have made the cut.
The average age of the top 100 richest global entrepreneurs is 53, with 15 of them being younger than 40. The youngest is Evan Spiegel, founder of Snapchat, who is 25 years old; while the oldest is Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, who is 86.
Hong Kong's Zhou Qunfei is the richest tech women in Asia, with a net worth of $7.5 billion. Her company, Lens Technology, went public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in March.
According to the data, most entrepreneurs on the list are from hardware, software, social networking, online gambling and high-tech production industries.
