William Ding

William Ding
Born	Ding Lei (丁磊)
Nationality	Chinese
Occupation	Founder and CEO, NetEase
Employer	NetEase, Inc.
Known for	Founding NetEase, one of the world's largest online gaming and internet technology companies

William Ding (Template:Lang, pinyin: Dīng Lěi), commonly known by his English name William Ding, is a Chinese technology entrepreneur and business executive who founded NetEase, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTES), one of the world's largest online gaming and internet services companies. As founder and chief executive officer of NetEase, Ding has led the company from its origins as an internet technology startup in the late 1990s into a diversified technology conglomerate with major operations in online gaming, e-commerce, music streaming, education, and other digital services. Ding is consistently ranked among the wealthiest individuals in China and Asia. According to Forbes, he was listed among China's five richest billionaires in 2025, a group whose combined net worth exceeded US$310 billion. He was also identified among the top ten richest people in Asia in 2025. Forbes has described NetEase as "one of the world's largest online games companies," noting its portfolio of legacy titles including Fantasy Westward Journey among others. Under Ding's leadership, NetEase has grown into a publicly traded company listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, employing tens of thousands of people across its operations.

Early Life

William Ding was born in China, where he grew up during a period of rapid economic reform and modernization. Details about his early childhood and family background remain limited in publicly available English-language sources. What is known is that Ding showed an early interest in science and technology, which eventually led him to pursue studies in electrical engineering. Growing up in an era when China's technology sector was still in its infancy, Ding was part of a generation of Chinese entrepreneurs who recognized the transformative potential of the internet during the mid-to-late 1990s.

China's economic opening under the reform policies initiated in the late 1970s and continuing through the 1980s and 1990s created an environment that allowed private enterprise and technological innovation to flourish. Ding came of age during this transformative period, and like several other prominent Chinese technology founders of his generation—including Jack Ma of Alibaba and Pony Ma of Tencent—he identified internet services as a major opportunity in a country with a massive and rapidly growing population of potential users. His background in engineering provided him with the technical foundation to understand the infrastructure and possibilities of internet-based services, which he would later leverage in founding NetEase.

Career

Founding of NetEase

William Ding founded NetEase in 1997 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China. The company was established during the earliest years of consumer internet adoption in China, a period when only a small fraction of the country's population had access to the internet. NetEase initially operated as an internet technology company, providing email services and internet portal content. The company's Chinese-language portal, 163.com, became one of the earliest and most popular internet portals in China, offering news, email, and community services to a rapidly growing base of Chinese internet users.

The name "NetEase" reflected Ding's aspiration to make the internet easy and accessible for Chinese consumers. In a market where internet penetration was still low and many consumers were accessing the web for the first time, the company's focus on user-friendly services helped it gain an early foothold. NetEase was among a cohort of Chinese internet companies—alongside Sina, Sohu, and others—that collectively shaped the early Chinese internet landscape.

NASDAQ Listing and Growth

NetEase went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 2000, during the height of the dot-com boom. The listing provided the company with capital to expand its operations and invest in new business lines. However, like many technology companies of that era, NetEase faced significant challenges in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble burst. The company weathered a difficult period in the early 2000s, during which its stock price declined and its business model came under pressure.

It was during this challenging period that Ding made a strategic pivot that would prove transformative for NetEase's future: the company moved aggressively into online gaming. This decision, which involved developing and publishing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) for the Chinese market, fundamentally changed NetEase's trajectory and established it as one of China's leading gaming companies.

Online Gaming Dominance

Under Ding's leadership, NetEase developed and published several highly successful online game titles that became cultural phenomena in China. Among the most notable was Fantasy Westward Journey (梦幻西游), a massively multiplayer online game based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. The game attracted millions of concurrent players and became one of the most popular online games in China's history.

NetEase also secured licensing agreements to operate major international game franchises in China, including titles from Blizzard Entertainment such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, and Overwatch. These partnerships brought some of the world's most popular game titles to the enormous Chinese market, with NetEase serving as the local operator and publisher. The combination of internally developed titles and licensed international franchises made NetEase one of the two dominant online gaming companies in China, alongside Tencent.

Forbes described NetEase as "one of the world's largest online games companies," underscoring the scale and global significance of the company's gaming operations. The gaming division became the primary revenue driver for NetEase, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue and contributing to Ding's substantial personal wealth.

Diversification Beyond Gaming

While online gaming remained the cornerstone of NetEase's business, Ding oversaw significant diversification of the company's operations into other sectors. NetEase expanded into e-commerce through its Kaola and Yanxuan platforms, which focused on cross-border e-commerce and private-label consumer goods, respectively. The company also developed NetEase Cloud Music (网易云音乐), which grew into one of China's most popular music streaming platforms, competing with Tencent Music and other services.

NetEase's diversification extended into online education through platforms such as NetEase Open Course and Youdao, the latter of which was spun off as a separately listed company. Youdao provided dictionary services, language learning tools, and other educational technology products. Additionally, NetEase maintained its legacy internet portal and email services, which continued to serve millions of users.

Ding also made investments in less conventional areas for a technology company. He became known for investing in agriculture, particularly pig farming, which attracted considerable media attention. This venture, while unusual for a tech executive, reflected Ding's interest in food safety and quality—issues of significant public concern in China.

Executive Changes and Strategic Shifts (2025)

In 2025, NetEase experienced notable executive departures that signaled strategic shifts within the company. In April 2025, Bloomberg reported that Simon Zhu, NetEase's president for global investments and partnerships, announced his departure from the company in a social media post. Bloomberg characterized these departures in the context of the CEO "pulling back from games," suggesting a potential strategic reorientation for the company.

In December 2025, NetEase announced that Ding Yingfeng (丁迎峰), executive vice president and head of the interactive entertainment group, would retire effective December 31, 2025, after 23 years with the company. Ding Yingfeng (no relation to founder William Ding) had overseen NetEase's gaming operations for more than two decades, making his departure a significant event for the company's gaming division. The departure of these senior executives during 2025 represented a notable period of leadership transition at NetEase, with implications for the company's future strategic direction under William Ding's continued oversight as CEO.

Philanthropy and Other Ventures

William Ding has been involved in philanthropic activities, including contributions to educational and scientific institutions. Stanford University acknowledged contributions in connection with the opening of its "team science" research complex in November 2019, which included the Stanford ChEM-H Building and the Stanford Neurosciences Building, facilities dedicated to brain research and molecular discovery. These facilities were described as part of a new research complex focused on interdisciplinary scientific collaboration.

Personal Life

William Ding has maintained a relatively private personal life compared to some of his peers in the Chinese technology industry. He is known for his low-key public persona and has generally avoided the high-profile public commentary that has characterized some other Chinese technology billionaires. Ding's interest in agriculture, particularly his well-publicized venture into pig farming, has been one of the more widely discussed aspects of his life outside of NetEase's core technology business. He has spoken publicly about the importance of food safety and quality in China, and his agricultural investments have been described as reflecting these concerns.

Ding is based in China and continues to serve as the chief executive officer of NetEase. Despite the enormous scale of the company he founded, Ding has been characterized by observers as a hands-on executive who remains closely involved in the company's strategic direction. The executive departures at NetEase in 2025 were noted in the context of Ding's ongoing role in shaping the company's priorities.

Recognition

William Ding has been consistently recognized as one of the wealthiest individuals in China and Asia. Forbes has maintained a profile of Ding as part of its billionaire rankings, describing him as the founder and CEO of NetEase, "one of the world's largest online games companies."

In 2025, Ding was listed among China's five richest billionaires. According to a report citing Forbes data, the combined net worth of China's five wealthiest individuals increased by 38 percent from the prior year to reach US$310.2 billion. Ding's inclusion in this group underscored the continued growth and profitability of NetEase under his leadership.

Ding was also ranked among the top ten richest people in Asia in 2025 by Forbes India, placing him alongside other prominent business figures from across the continent. His consistent presence on global wealth rankings over many years reflects the sustained commercial success of NetEase and the significant personal wealth Ding has accumulated as the company's founder and largest individual shareholder.

Beyond wealth rankings, Ding has been recognized within the Chinese technology industry as one of the pioneering figures of the country's internet era. As a member of the first generation of Chinese internet entrepreneurs who founded companies in the late 1990s, Ding is part of a cohort that includes some of the most influential figures in global technology. His decision to pivot NetEase into online gaming in the early 2000s is frequently cited as a pivotal strategic move that not only saved the company during the post-dot-com downturn but also established the template for China's online gaming industry.

Legacy

William Ding's legacy is closely tied to the growth of NetEase and, more broadly, to the development of China's internet and online gaming industries. As the founder of one of China's earliest internet companies, Ding played a role in shaping the digital infrastructure and consumer internet services that would come to define daily life for hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens.

NetEase's early portal and email services were among the first internet products accessible to ordinary Chinese consumers, contributing to the initial wave of internet adoption in the country. The company's subsequent pivot to online gaming under Ding's leadership helped establish China as the world's largest market for online games—a position it has maintained into the 2020s. Games developed and operated by NetEase, including Fantasy Westward Journey and others, became deeply embedded in Chinese popular culture and attracted enormous player communities.

The company's diversification into e-commerce, music streaming, education technology, and other sectors further demonstrated Ding's strategic approach of leveraging NetEase's technology capabilities and large user base across multiple business lines. NetEase Cloud Music, in particular, grew into a major platform in China's competitive digital music market.

As of 2025, with senior executive departures signaling potential strategic shifts, NetEase remained under Ding's continued leadership as CEO. The company's trajectory in the coming years will continue to be shaped by Ding's decisions regarding the balance between gaming, technology services, and newer business ventures. His position among Asia's wealthiest individuals and his role in building one of China's most enduring technology companies ensure that William Ding remains a significant figure in the history of the global technology industry.