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From rural poverty to billions: The story of the woman who stood next to Elon Musk and Tim Cook at Xi's dinner for Trump

2026-05-16 17:03:36Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Zhu Chunfei with Elon Musk and Tim Cook

Seated between the world's richest man, Elon Musk, and Apple CEO Tim Cook, at a dinner honoring Donald Trump in Beijing, was a woman who may not be well-known in the West, but who has managed to put her products in the hands of millions of people around the world.

Zhu Chunfei is the founder of Lens Technology, a company specializing in touchscreens. From a quasi-family business, her fortune now stands at $16 billion.

In a way, she represents the Chinese dream that started from a poor village in central China and became a successful businesswoman with hundreds of millions of internal migrants leaving the countryside for a better life in the cities.

She was born in 1970, one of four children in a poor farming family. From a young age, she and her siblings had to raise ducks and pigs or collect recyclable materials to help support the family.

Conditions were difficult and became even more difficult when her mother died when she was 5 years old and her father lost part of his sight and a finger in a work accident.

From rural poverty to billions: The story of the woman who stood next to Elon

At the age of 15, after leaving school, she went to Shenzhen to find work. First, she worked as a security guard at a construction site and then in a glass factory.

To learn the basics of the job, she worked from 8 a.m. to midnight, and even later. As for the salary, it was minimal, but she soon took on better positions and was appointed head of the glass production laboratory. She devoted the little free time she had to learning accounting and computers.

In the early 1990s, at a difficult time for the factory that was on the verge of closure, Chunfai was appointed director of the laboratory and later of the entire glass factory.

But she decided to pursue another dream.

In 2003, with $3,000 she had saved from years of hard work, she and some relatives founded Lens Technology, a company that manufactured phone screens, but it soon found itself on the verge of bankruptcy when a partner unexpectedly left.

From rural poverty to billions: The story of the woman who stood next to Elon

The then-mobile phone giant Motorola offered him a lifeline when it tasked Lens Technology with producing a type of glass that would not break when dropped from a height of one meter, something no other glass manufacturer in the world was able to do at the time. Chunfei succeeded and won a very lucrative contract.

Since 2007, Lens Technology has been the company that supplies Apple with the iPhone's glass screen.

However, she found herself surrounded by rumors that she was the mistress of a married man and had used his money to fuel her business activities.

She became widely known in 2015 as the richest woman in China, when her company was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and amassed a fortune of 50 billion yuan (with a current valuation of approximately 6.3 billion euros).

From rural poverty to billions: The story of the woman who stood next to Elon

Its partnership with Apple, which spans nearly two decades, has helped Lens Technology achieve tremendous growth and reach revenues of nearly 70 billion yuan.

A relationship that, however, also carries risks as iPhone sales have slowed since 2016, resulting in a decline in Lens Technology's net profits.

In this context, Lens Technology has signed contracts with giants such as Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi and Oppo. In 2024, Apple's revenue share was below 50% and the automotive sector is at 8.5% with partnerships with Tesla, BYD, Mercedes and BMW.

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