TERRY GOU

Gou was born in Taipei in 1950. His family had emigrated from China after the Communist revolution.

At 24, he borrowed $7,500 from his mother and started Hon Hai Precision Industry — which the world would come to know as Foxconn.

The company started by making plastic knobs for television sets. Gou gradually moved into connectors, then cable assemblies, then full electronic components.

In the 1990s, as global electronics companies began outsourcing manufacturing to Asia, Foxconn was perfectly positioned.

The Apple relationship changed everything. When Steve Jobs needed a manufacturer who could produce millions of iPhones at incredible scale and quality, he chose Foxconn.

Today, Foxconn assembles the majority of Apple’s iPhones and a huge share of the world’s consumer electronics.

Foxconn’s factory complexes in China are essentially small cities — the Zhengzhou facility alone employs over 300,000 people. At peak capacity, it produces 500,000 iPhones per day.

Gou stepped down as chairman in 2019 to run for president of Taiwan. He lost the primary.

He remains the company’s largest shareholder.

Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry) is the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer. Revenue exceeds $215 billion annually.

The company manufactures products for Apple, Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, HP, Dell, and dozens of other tech giants. It employs roughly 800,000 people globally.

Sharp Corporation — Foxconn acquired the iconic Japanese electronics company in 2016 for $3.5 billion when Sharp was near bankruptcy. It was the first major acquisition of a Japanese tech company by a foreign firm.

Gou also has investments in various tech ventures, including electric vehicles through Foxconn’s MIH platform, an open EV hardware initiative.

Gou is an operator-investor. He doesn’t buy stocks and wait.

He builds or acquires manufacturing capacity and then fills it with contracts from the world’s biggest tech companies.

His investment thesis has always been about scale. In electronics manufacturing, the company with the largest scale gets the best component prices, the most efficient processes, and the biggest contracts.

Gou spent 50 years pursuing scale relentlessly.

The Sharp acquisition showed a new dimension — buying distressed brands with great technology and reviving them with Foxconn’s manufacturing muscle.

Winning the Apple contract. Becoming the primary manufacturer of the iPhone — the most profitable product in human history — transformed Foxconn from a large Taiwanese manufacturer into a global industrial giant.

The Apple relationship has generated hundreds of billions in revenue and made Gou one of the richest people in Asia.

The worker conditions controversy. In 2010, a series of worker suicides at Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory drew global attention to the brutal working conditions in electronics manufacturing.

Foxconn installed suicide prevention nets on buildings. The crisis damaged the company’s reputation and forced significant investment in worker welfare.

Gou’s presidential campaign in 2019 was also a misstep. He spent months campaigning, lost the primary, and temporarily destabilized Foxconn’s leadership during a critical period.

Gou believes that manufacturing is the foundation of economic power. His philosophy is: build the factory, control the production, and the profits will follow.

While Silicon Valley celebrated software and design, Gou bet on the unsexy reality that someone still has to actually make the physical products.

He also believes in vertical integration. Foxconn doesn’t just assemble — it makes components, molds, connectors, and cases.

The more of the supply chain you control, the higher your margins.

Gou is married to Delia Tseng, his second wife. He has children from both marriages.

His personal life has been relatively private compared to his business profile. He’s deeply connected to Taiwan’s business community and has been an influential figure in cross-strait relations between Taiwan and China.

Gou attended China Marine Technology University in Taipei. He didn’t attend a prestigious university or business school.

His education was practical — he learned manufacturing by doing it, starting with TV knobs and working up to iPhones. The entire Foxconn empire was built on shop-floor knowledge, not classroom theory.

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