Born in Shanghai, China, in 1949, Barry Lam (Lam Po-Yen) is a Taiwanese billionaire and the founder and Chairman of Quanta Computer, one of the world's largest contract manufacturers of laptop computers and cloud server systems. His family emigrated from Shanghai to Taiwan, where he grew up.

Lam received a technical education in engineering, graduating with a degree that prepared him for the complex world of electronics manufacturing. His entrepreneurial journey began with an early understanding of the potential of personal computing. In the 1980s, recognizing the inevitable shift from desktop machines to portable computing, Lam founded Quanta Computer with a singular, radical vision: that PCs must be made mobile.

Barry Lam founded Quanta Computer Inc. in 1988 with the vision of dominating the mobile computing market. Quanta quickly became the crucial, behind-the-scenes engineering and manufacturing partner for nearly all the world’s top technology brands, often producing over one-third of the world’s notebook computers. Lam’s success was built on a mastery of high-volume, high-quality contract manufacturing, providing design, engineering, and assembly services.

His career is marked by two prophetic visions that guided Quanta’s growth:

• Vision 1 (1988): 'PCs must be made mobile' (leading to laptop dominance).
• Vision 2 (Late 1990s): 'The PC must be virtualized' (leading to cloud dominance). Under Lam’s leadership, Quanta aggressively pivoted into the manufacturing of data center servers and cloud infrastructure equipment, becoming a vital supplier to cloud giants like Google and Amazon.