The 19% jump in shares in Internet of Things cloud platform provider Tuya on its first day of trading at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday has minted China’s latest billionaire.
At yesterday’s closing price of $25 a share, founder and CEO Jerry Wang’s 86.6 million shares in Tuya held through his Tuya Group were worth $2.2 billion; he is the settlor of a trust that holds 27 million shares that were worth another $675 million.
Prior to founding Tuya 2014, Wang worked as a senior director in China e-commerce heavyweight Alibaba, launching product innovations for Alibaba Cloud and Alipay that included Alibaba’s QR code payment system, according to the company’s prospectus. In…