The Hurun Research Institute released the Hurun China Rich List 2026 on October 27, with 1,529 entrepreneurs whose personal wealth exceeds 5 billion yuan making the list this year, an increase of 95 individuals compared to last year.
The total wealth of listed entrepreneurs reached 32 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%. A total of 785 entrepreneurs saw their wealth grow compared to last year, including 263 newcomers; 911 entrepreneurs experienced a decline or no change in wealth, with 167 dropping off the list.
More than 260 entrepreneurs newly entered the list in 2026, with the top newcomer being 41-year-old AI entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek, who entered the top ten directly with wealth of 280 billion yuan. Meanwhile, AI has become the single largest wealth growth engine on the list, with over 160 listed entrepreneurs in this sector, accounting for more than 10% of the total.
Rupert Hoogewerf, Chairman and Chief Researcher of the Hurun Group, told reporters that embodied intelligence, which refers to AI with a physical carrier, has entered a stage of large-scale commercial application this year, and the list directly confirms this trend. Currently, nearly 80 listed entrepreneurs derive their wealth from the robotics sector.
The biggest highlight in the robotics sector this year is 36-year-old Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree Robotics and a humanoid robot pioneer, who made the list for the first time with wealth of 69.5 billion yuan, making him the second-largest new entrant on the list. Unitree Robotics completed its listing in August, with the company's market value briefly surging to 440 billion yuan on the first day of trading, and Wang Xingxing's personal wealth once exceeded 130 billion yuan.
Hoogewerf noted that other notable new entrants in the embodied intelligence field include Deng Taihua of AgiBot, Guo Yandong of AI² Robotics, Zhou Yong of Lingxin Qiaoshou, and 34-year-old Gao Jiyang of Galaxea. Qian Dongqi of Ecovacs and Zhou Jian of UBTECH represent mature leading entrepreneurs within the sector.
When the robot era fully arrives, I believe China will continue to maintain its leading position in this track, Hoogewerf said. In the commercial space sector, three rocket founders made the list for the first time: 43-year-old Zhang Changwu of LandSpace, whose Zhuque-3 reusable rocket attracted global attention this summer; Kang Yonglai of Space Pioneer; and Yang Yiqiang of CAS Space also joined the list.
It is expected that the wealth of these entrepreneurs will grow substantially in the coming years. The brain-computer interface and quantum computing sectors have not yet produced any billion-dollar entrepreneurs. Give this field another five years, and we will see changes, Hoogewerf concluded.
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