Gou is the founder and largest shareholder of Foxconn Technology Group, the world's biggest contract assembler of consumer electronics. Its trading unit, Hon Hai Precision Industry, reported revenue of NT$6.6 trillion ($222 billion) in 2022. Its manufactures components for Kindles, PlayStations as well as Apple's iPhone and iPad.
Gou's wealth is derived from Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, the publicly traded division of Foxconn Technology Group, He owns about 12.6% of the company, according to an August 2023 Taiwan stock exchange disclosure. About a half of his shares are pledged and excluded from the net worth calculation.
Foxconn is the world's largest contract assembler of consumer electronics. Its customers include Apple, Sony, Dell and Microsoft and it has factories and subsidiaries in China, Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia, U.S. and Europe.
Gou has a 9.8% stake in Sharp Corporation, according to its March 2023 annual report. He also holds a 9% stake in EirGenix, a New Taipei City-based biopharmaceutical company, through two holding companies according to its Oct. 15, 2021 press release and its 2022 annual report.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance.
Wen-min Chu, a spokesman for Foxconn Technology Group, declined to comment on his net worth.
Guo was born in 1950, the oldest of three boys in his family. Gou's father had fought with the Kuomintang army in China's civil war and fled along with Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan in 1949.
At age 23, when Gou was working as a shipping clerk, he gained a firsthand view of Taiwan's booming export economy and decided to stop pushing paper and start his own business. With a $7,500 loan from his mother, he bought a couple of plastic molding machines and started making channel-changing knobs for black-and-white televisions in 1974. His first major customer was Chicago-based Admiral TV, and he soon got deals to supply RCA, Zenith and Philips (PHG).
Gou (pronounced Gwo) made his first push into the U.S., visiting 32 states in 11 months in the early 1980s. He dropped in on companies unannounced, like a door-to-door salesman, arriving in a "big and safe" Lincoln Town Car he rented in every city. In Raleigh, North Carolina, he booked himself into a motel close to an IBM facility. After three days of hanging around, he got an appointment and came away with a company order for connectors.
After setting up a subsidiary in the U.S. and creating the "Foxconn" brand, Gou opened a factory in Shenzhen, China, as the country was opening up its economy. He paid workers $30 a month, offered them housing and gave them a free breakfast each day, including one egg per person when few people in China could afford them.
Gou sold Hon Hai Precision shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1991 to fund his expansion mostly into China. Foxconn currently has more than 100 factories and subsidiaries located in China, Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia, the U.S. and Europe and it counts almost all the major technology brands as its clients, including IBM Corp., Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Apple. Foxconn accounted for 5.9 percent of the total trade volume of China in 2011.
In China, 11 workers committed suicide, mostly by leaping off company-owned high-rise dormitories, prompting intense scrutiny of labor conditions by customers, labor activists, the media and the Chinese government in 2010. To combat the negative publicity, Foxconn raised wages, set up counseling centers and even set up nets around its buildings to catch jumpers.
Gou has been married twice. His second wife is Delia Tseng, a dance instructor 24 years his junior who was hired to prepare him for the company's annual Chinese New Year party, in which he would perform the tango with Taiwanese model Lin Chi-ling. His first wife Serena Lin died of breast cancer on March 12, 2005.