E ric Yuan is a Chinese-American billionaire and the founder and CEO of Zoom Video Communications. Born in China, he was inspired to create a better video conferencing tool after the long train journeys he had to take to visit his girlfriend (now his wife). After being denied a U.S. visa eight times, he finally moved to Silicon Valley and became an early and key engineer at the video conferencing company Webex.

After Webex was acquired by Cisco, Yuan became frustrated with the product's quality and left to found Zoom in 2011. He built a new, cloud-based video communications platform with a relentless focus on user experience, reliability, and a "freemium" model. Zoom's ease of use made it popular, but its growth became explosive during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the world shifted to remote work and online communication. The company's platform became an essential tool for businesses, schools, and families, and its soaring stock price turned Yuan into one of the wealthiest people in the world.