Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted a state banquet for US President Donald Trump, where Zhou Qunfei, CEO of Lens Technology, a company that manufactures iPhone screens, secured a seat at a notably prominent location.
She was seated between two of her most important clients, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla founder Elon Musk, at the high-profile event attended by numerous top business executives from China and the United States. People have been discussing how Zhou Qunfei, an international billionaire, found herself positioned among these prominent figures.
The life story of Zhou Qunfei, who is now mingling among international billionaires, is truly as interesting as a movie plot.
She was born in 1970 from an extremely poor rural family in Hunan Province and dropped out of school at age 15, working as a factory laborer in Shenzhen.
However, at age 23 in 1993, she founded a small business with some relatives that involved screen printing on watch dials, and within the next decade, it had grown into the large Lens Technology company.
When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, Lens Technology gained the opportunity to supply screens for Apple's global supply chain, and her company subsequently became world-renowned.
As the iPhone achieved worldwide success, Apple became Lens Technology's largest client. In 2015, when the company was listed on the stock exchange, Zhou Qunfei became one of China's wealthiest self-made women.
The company expanded its business to the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2025. At the close of the stock market last Saturday, Lens Technology's Shanghai-listed shares rose nearly 5.9 percent, and the company's total market capitalization reached approximately 180.6 billion yuan (approximately 26.6 billion US dollars).
Ref: South China Morning Post
