NetEase, from free email to blockbuster games
William Ding's fortune is based on his controlling stake in NetEase, the internet company he founded in Guangzhou in 1997. NetEase started by offering free email accounts and a web portal at a time when few Chinese households were online. Its 163.com and 126.com email services attracted large numbers of users, and the portal sold advertising alongside news and other content.
NetEase listed on the Nasdaq exchange in 2000, at the height of the dot com boom. The following year the bubble burst, the shares fell sharply and trading was suspended for a period over an accounting issue. Ding responded by refocusing the company. Mobile text messaging services provided revenue, and NetEase moved into online games, a market that would define its future.
The company released Westward Journey, a role playing game based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, and then Fantasy Westward Journey in 2004, which became one of the most popular online games in China. NetEase built its own development studios and became the second largest games company in China after Tencent. Games still produce most of its revenue, and Ding's large personal holding in NetEase is the main source of his wealth. He remains chief executive and a director.
NetEase and its spin offs
NetEase has grown into a group of businesses, several of which are separately listed:
- Online games: titles such as Fantasy Westward Journey, Onmyoji, Identity V, Eggy Party and Marvel Rivals, developed by NetEase studios in China and abroad
- NetEase Cloud Music: a music streaming service listed in Hong Kong in 2021
- Youdao: an online education and translation company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2019
- Yanxuan: a private label consumer goods brand selling homeware, clothing and food
- Email and other internet services: including the long running 163.com email service
For many years NetEase also published games from Blizzard Entertainment in China, including World of Warcraft. That partnership ended in early 2023, interrupting service for millions of players, before the companies announced a renewed agreement in 2024.
NetEase added a secondary listing in Hong Kong in 2020 while keeping its Nasdaq listing. It has invested in game studios in Japan, Europe and North America, aiming to build hits for audiences outside China, although it scaled back some overseas studios in later years.
Early years in Ningbo and first jobs
Ding Lei was born in 1971 in Ningbo, Zhejiang province. He showed an interest in electronics and radio from a young age. He studied communications technology at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, graduating in 1993.
After university he took a job with the telecom bureau in Ningbo, a secure government position. He left it in 1995, a move that was unusual at the time, and went to Guangzhou, where he worked for the US database company Sybase and then for a small internet firm. These jobs gave him experience with networks and software just as the internet arrived in China.
In 1997 he founded NetEase with a small amount of capital. He wrote much of the early email software himself, and the free service was licensed to other portals, which helped the company grow. He used the English name William and became one of the first well known Chinese internet entrepreneurs. NetEase later moved its main base to Hangzhou, where it built a large campus.
Philanthropy and outside interests
Ding has made donations to education and other causes, usually with little publicity. During the Covid outbreak in 2020, NetEase and Ding supported relief efforts in Hubei and other affected provinces.
He has also taken an interest in agriculture. In 2009 he announced that NetEase would raise pigs, a project that was widely mocked at first but led to Weiwei, an agricultural business producing pork with modern farming methods, and to branded food products. He has spoken about food safety and the quality of produce in China as the motivation behind the project.
Ding rarely gives interviews and has kept a moderate public profile compared with the founders of Alibaba and Tencent. When he does appear in public, he tends to speak about technology, education and food quality. Within the games industry he is known for close involvement in product decisions and for pushing NetEase studios to invest in large, high quality titles.