Mobile game Free Fire propels 39-year-old Singaporean co-founder of Sea into the billionaires club
- Battle royale title distributed by Sea ranked among the five most downloaded games on the Apple and Google app stores for three straight quarters this year
- Gang Ye holds an 8.4 per cent stake in the company and is worth US$1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Singapore’s newest billionaire is a former government employee who rode mobile sensation Free Fire into the ranks of the ultra-wealthy this week.
The battle royale or fight-to-the-death title distributed by Sea ranked among the five most downloaded games on the Apple and Google app stores for three straight quarters this year and has amassed US$1 billion in adjusted revenue since launching in 2017. That propelled a tripling in Sea’s market value and the fortune of co-founder Gang Ye, a Carnegie Mellon University alum who’s worked for Wilmar International and Singapore’s Economic Development Board.
The 39-year-old joins fellow co-founder Forrest Li, whose larger stake in the fast-growing games-to-shopping company earned him a 10-digit fortune earlier this year. Ye, who moved to Singapore from China in the 1990s as a teenager and became a citizen soon after his return from the US, has served as Sea’s chief operating officer since 2017.
The executive holds an 8.4 per cent stake in the company and is worth US$1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. A company representative declined to comment on his net worth.
Shares in the company, which is part-owned by Chinese social media titan Tencent Holdings, reached an all-time high this month after Sea reported a tripling in revenue to US$610.1 million in the third quarter.