14. John Tu

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14. John  Tu

Net Worth: $6 B

LAST YEAR: $9.1 B
CHANGE: -34%
AGE: 81
RESIDENCE: Rolling Hills
SOURCE OF WEALTH: Technology

THE MONEY: Tu, who was born in China, co-founded and owns a 50% stake in Kingston Technology Corp., which he launched with David Sun, whom he met while playing basketball. Fountain Valley-based Kingston, founded in 1987, makes and distributes computer equipment. Kingston annual revenue is estimated at $15 billion. The company employs 3,200 people. Tu and Sun sold 80% of Kingston to Japan’s SoftBank for $1.5 billion in 1996, then bought the company back for $450 million in 1999. Tu and Sun founded memory-products maker Camintonn Corp. in the 1980s; that company was later sold to AST Research Inc. More recently, Tu invested $50 million in Fluxergy, an Irvine-based diagnostics company launched in 2013. Fluxergy developed a Covid-19 test.

THE BUZZ: Under Tu, Kingston sold its gaming division, HyperX, to HP Inc. in 2021 for $425 million. HyperX’s offerings include gaming peripheral products such as keyboards, mice, headsets, mouse pads, USB microphones and console accessories for gamers. Months later, the company rebranded its retained high-performance gaming products as Kingston Fury, which encompasses internals such as dynamic random access memory and solid state drive gaming products.

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