Ma Huateng, founder of Tencent, ranks the third richest person in China by Forbes in 2022

Ma Huateng and his four friends founded Tencent in 1998. In February 1999, Ma Huateng officially launched an instant messaging service called "OICQ". The name "OICQ" was later changed to "QQ". In 2004, Tencent became the largest instant messaging service provider.

The company owns 74% of the shares in the Chinese market and has achieved success. Subsequently, Tencent registered in the Hong Kong stock market because it successfully raised US $200 million. This made Ma Huateng one of the richest businessmen in China.

Later, Ma Huateng considered entering the e-commerce field, which is another rapidly growing and profitable field. In 2005, Ma launched an e-commerce platform comparable to $Alibaba(BABA.US)$ .

Ma Huateng established a department "Tencent" in 2010 to engage in video game development under "Tencent interactive entertainment". Due to huge profits, "Tencent games" became the world's largest video game company in 2018.

In 2014, Tencent also cooperated with many large-scale music production companies such as $Sony(SONY.US)$ , $Warner Music(WMG.US)$ and signed a distribution contract in China.