Pop Mart CEO Wang Ning Surges into Global Billionaire Elite on Labubu Doll Craze

Amid the global excitement surrounding artificial intelligence, the wealth of Wang Ning, the head of China’s Pop Mart, has surged, elevating him more than 300 places in the global billionaire rankings and putting him ahead of figures such as BYD’s Wang Chuan-Fu and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.

The craze for Labubu dolls has fueled Pop Mart’s rapid rise, making Wang one of the world’s fastest-growing billionaires this year. Founded in 2010, Pop Mart gained worldwide recognition with its blind box business model, offering collectible toys with distinctive designs that appeal to young consumers and collectors through the element of surprise.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Pop Mart’s stock has soared over 250% since the start of 2025, lifting Wang’s net worth to $26.5 billion as of August 28. Holding nearly half of the company’s shares, the 38-year-old CEO has added around $20 billion to his fortune this year alone, more than tripling his wealth. This meteoric climb propelled him from 400th to 85th on Bloomberg’s billionaire list, surpassing high-profile names such as Peter Thiel, with $24.2 billion, and Wang Chuan-Fu, with $26 billion.

The phenomenal success of Labubu dolls and The Monsters series has driven record-breaking results for Pop Mart. In the first half of 2025, revenue reached 13.9 billion yuan ($1.9 billion), tripling from the same period last year, while operating profit quintupled to nearly 6 billion yuan. The Monsters line alone generated 4.8 billion yuan, contributing more than one-third of total sales.

Unlike many of today’s wealth leaders who have benefited from the AI boom—such as Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang—Wang has built his fortune in the toy industry. Pop Mart, which went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in December 2020 at under $6 a share, now trades at about $44, underscoring the company’s explosive growth.

With this momentum, Wang Ning and Pop Mart are emerging as new icons of China’s entertainment and consumer sectors, proving that small collectibles can generate billion-dollar empires on the global stage.