David Sun (Chinese: 孫大衛; pinyin: Sūn Dàwèi; born 12 October 1951)[1] is a Taiwanese-American billionaire businessman, co-founder (with John Tu) and COO of Kingston Technology.
Sun controls a 50% stake in Kingston Technology and co-founder John Tu controls the balance, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times and later confirmed by a company spoksperson.
Kingston is the world’s biggest independent maker of computer memory products, according to the company’s website. The closely held company had revenue of $16.1 billion in 2022, according to it 2022 sustainability report.
Kingston is valued using the average enterprise value-to-sales multiple of four publicly traded peers: Samsung Electronics Co, Transcend Information Inc, Adata Technology and Western Digital Corp. The valuation was updated for 2022 results on July 7, 2023, leading to a rise of about $1.5 billion.
Sun and Tu sold 80% of the business to Softbank for $1.5 billion in 1996. The proceeds used in this analysis are reduced by $400 million to account for a $100 million bonus the pair distributed to Kingston employees after the sale and $300 million they deducted from the price after agreeing to renegotiate the sale terms. The details, reported by Bloomberg News at the time, were confirmed by Tu in a 2013 interview with Fortune magazine. The billionaires bought back the stake from Softbank for $450 million in 1999.
David Leong, a company spokesman, declined to comment on the billionaire’s net worth.
Biography
Education: Tatung University
David Sun was born in Taiwan on Oct. 12, 1951, and began studying electrical engineering at the Ta-Tung Institute of Technology in 1973. He immigrated to the United States four years later and took a job at Alpha Micro Systems, an electronic component maker.
He met John Tu, a fellow Chinese immigrant, in Los Angeles. The pair bonded over a mutual love of basketball, according to an interview Tu gave to Fortune in December 2013, and decided to go into business together. They founded memory device maker Camintonn in 1982, and sold the company four years later to AST Research for $6 million. They lost all their savings in the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987, and created computer memory module maker Kingston Technology, where Sun remains chief operating officer.
Tu and Sun sold an 80 percent stake in the closely held company to Softbank for $1.4 billion in 1996, and distributed $100 million of the proceeds to their employees. They bought back Softbank’s stake three years later amid shrinking demand for $450 million.
Sun is married with two children.
Milestones
- 1951 David Sun is born in Taiwan.
- 1982 Founds memory device maker Camintonn with John Tu in 1982.
- 1986 Sells Camintonn to AST Research for $6 million.
- 1987 Loses all his savings in the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987.
- 1987 Founds computer memory maker Kingston Technology with John Tu.
- 1996 Softbank buys 80 percent of Kingston for $1.5 billion.
- 1999 Buys back Softbank’s stake for $450 million with partner John Tu.
- 2011 Kingston Technology reports record revenue of $6.5 billion.
