Yageo's Pierre Chen becomes the richest person in Taiwan with a net worth of 490 billion TWD! The King of Passive Components bets on AI, shares surge 125% in a year

Yageo Chairman Pierre Chen has topped the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List as the richest person in Taiwan with a net worth of $15.6 billion (approximately NT$490 billion), unseating Foxconn founder Terry Gou, who held the title for many years. Yageo's stock price has soared 125% this year, with its market capitalization surpassing the trillion-dollar mark. The driving force behind this is the explosive demand for passive components in AI servers; a single high-end AI server uses 30 times the amount of MLCCs found in a smartphone. (Previous coverage: The Semiconductor Century: Investment Roadmap for the 2026 AI Boom) (Background: NVIDIA Market Cap Dominates the World! Jensen Huang's Net Worth Increases by $4 Billion Daily; How Far Is He from Surpassing Elon Musk to Become the World's Richest Person?) With the official list released, 69-year-old Pierre Chen moved up from third to first place. He started from scratch, spending 49 years transforming a small ceramic capacitor factory into a global giant in passive components. By waiting for the AI trend, he has unseated Terry Gou from the top spot. The strategic position of passive components in the AI era is being repriced. The number of MLCCs used in a high-end AI server is about 10 to 15 times that of a standard server, and 30 times that of a smartphone. For every Blackwell GPU card NVIDIA sells, a whole array of passive components is shipped along with it. Yageo delivered its best-ever Q1 performance this year, with consolidated revenue of NT$38.16 billion, a 22.7% year-on-year increase. Net profit after tax reached NT$8 billion, up 44.6% year-on-year, with earnings per share (EPS) of NT$3.9. The gross margin hit a 14-quarter high of 38.1%. AI-related revenue has climbed to 15%, and over 30% of tantalum polymer capacitor revenue comes from AI applications, a figure the company says is still accelerating. The price hike cycle for MLCCs has been established. Major manufacturers like Japan's Murata and South Korea's Samsung Electro-Mechanics are shifting their production capacity toward high-end products, and Yageo is absorbing a large volume of overflow orders. The company has adjusted prices multiple times since Q4 of last year, with the effects directly reflected in the improvement of gross margins. Pierre Chen co-founded Yageo with his brother Chen Mu-yuan in 1977, starting with the production of ceramic capacitors and resistors. In recent years, his global acquisition map has included the century-old American firm KEMET ($1.6 billion acquisition), Pulse Electronics, the Heraeus sensor business unit in Germany, the industrial sensor business unit of Schneider Electric in France, and Shibaura Electronics in Japan. He has built Yageo into the world's largest manufacturer of chip resistors and tantalum capacitors, and the third-largest MLCC manufacturer. This is how he earned the title "King of Passive Component Acquisitions." Currently, about 75% of Yageo's revenue comes from high-barrier applications such as AI, automotive, industrial, medical, and aerospace/defense—a product structure Pierre Chen spent nearly two decades building through acquisitions. What is Pierre Chen's net worth, and what is his global ranking? According to the latest data from the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List, Yageo Chairman Pierre Chen has a net worth of approximately $15.6 billion (about NT$490 billion), ranking 186th globally and surpassing Terry Gou to become the richest person in Taiwan. Why has Yageo's stock price risen so much this year? The main reason is the explosive demand for MLCCs in AI servers (usage per unit is 30 times that of a smartphone). Coupled with the fact that MLCCs have entered a price hike cycle, Yageo's Q1 revenue grew 22.7% year-on-year and net profit grew 44.6% year-on-year, driving the stock price up 125% year-to-date.