Hou Chih-yuan
Hou Chih-yuan (Jack Chih-Yuan Hou) is a Taiwanese businessman and the president of Universal Cement CorporationUniversal Cement CorporationUniversal Cement Corporation is a Taiwanese cement and building materials company founded in 1960 under the leadership of Tainan Gang founder Hou Yu-li and listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange since 1971 (code 1104). It makes cement, ready-mixed concrete and gypsum board, and its subsidiary Uneo works on pressure-sensing technology. Its chairman is Hou Bo-yi and its president is Hou Chih-yuan.Open the full entry, a fourth-generation member of the Tainan Gang’s Hou family and the younger son of Hou Bo-yiHou Bo-yiHou Bo-yi is a Taiwanese businessman, chairman of Universal Cement Corporation and the eldest grandson of Tainan Gang founder Hou Yu-li. He took control of the company’s management in 2008, serving as both chairman and president, and brought his sons Hou Chih-sheng and Hou Chih-yuan into the business. His wife, Su Chin-chien, is a cousin of Jensen Huang.Open the full entry. A week after finishing a master’s degree in East Asian studies at Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry in 2008, he joined Universal Cement at 24 as a vice president in charge of sales, later becoming chief operating officer and then president.
Contents6 sections
Key facts
Early Life: Education
2008Joining Universal Cement a Week After Graduating
In 2008, during the global financial crisis, his father, Hou Bo-yi, took control of Universal Cement, and a week after finishing his Harvard master’s degree Hou Chih-yuan was called back to Taiwan and joined the company at 24 directly as a vice president. He later acknowledged that this was not necessarily the best way to handle succession, but said the business then needed a trustworthy owner on site.[2]
At Universal Cement he took charge of sales while his elder brother, Hou Chih-shengHou Chih-shengHou Chih-sheng (Johnson Hou) is a Taiwanese engineer and businessman with a PhD in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is vice chairman and chief executive of Universal Cement Corporation and president of its subsidiary Uneo, a fourth-generation member of the Tainan Gang’s Hou family and the elder son of Hou Bo-yi. His LinkedIn profile lists him as chief executive officer of the pressure-sensing company Tekscan since November 2025.Open the full entry, handled management and the electronics business; father and sons restructured the staff, disposed of the mainland plants and expanded the gypsum board business.[1]
His LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry profile lists him as a director of Universal Cement since December 2008; as a vice president since June 2009, managing the cement, concrete and plasterboard divisions and acting as company spokesperson; and as chief marketing officer of Uneo since September 2013.[3]
2024–2026Chief Operating Officer and President
A May 2024 Business Today article described him as Universal Cement’s chief operating officer; he used a line from the film The Grandmaster to describe his great-grandfather Hou Yu-liHou Yu-liHou Yu-li was a Taiwanese entrepreneur and a founding figure of the Tainan Gang. Born in Beimen, Tainan, he started as a cloth-shop apprentice, founded the Hsin Fu Hsing cloth business and went on to help found Tainan Spinning and Universal Cement, backing figures such as Wu Hsiu-chi and Kao Ching-yuan; Tainan Gang companies include Uni-President and Prince Housing. He was paired with Wang Yung-ching as “Wang in the north, Hou in the south.”Open the full entry’s sense of timing.[4]
Company registration records list Hou Chih-yuan as a director and president of Universal Cement. In a June 2026 Business Today podcast he discussed the company’s exit from mainland China, vertical integration of its ready-mixed concrete and gypsum board businesses in Taiwan and the introduction of AI and automation, and described Universal Cement as a stock for long-term holders, with earnings per share of about NT$2 in recent years.[5][2]
Family Ties and Alumni Organizations
In June 2023 the Liberty Times summarized a family chart of Jensen HuangJensen HuangJensen Huang is a co-founder of NVIDIA who served as its president, chief executive officer, and a director from the company’s founding in 1993 until he resigned from those positions in November 2026. He has a background in electrical engineering education and the semiconductor industry, and under his leadership NVIDIA’s business expanded from graphics chips to GPU general-purpose computing, artificial intelligence, and data center computing platforms.Open the full entry compiled by veteran journalist Wu Chia-chin: Huang’s mother, Lo Tsai-hsiu, and Lisa SuLisa SuLisa Su is a semiconductor engineer and business executive who serves as Chair and CEO of AMD. She earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale. After joining AMD in 2012, she became CEO in 2014, led the company’s growth in high-performance computing, data centers, and artificial intelligence, and also became Chair in 2022.Open the full entry’s maternal grandfather, Lo Po-mu, are siblings; Su Chin-chien, the daughter of Huang’s third maternal aunt, Lo Sui-liu, married Hou Bo-yi, the eldest grandson of Hou Yu-li and chairman of Universal Cement, which makes the Hou family’s fourth generation, Hou Chih-sheng and Hou Chih-yuan, Huang’s first cousins once removed.[6]
His LinkedIn profile lists him as a director of the Columbia Alumni Association of Taiwan since 2011 and of the Harvard Club of ROC since 2014.[3]
Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts
Universal Cement Corporation: Official website: http://www.ucctw.com/ (opens in a new window) (as listed in its company registration).[5]
Sources
- 侯氏兄弟出招 老店環泥跨足科技有成 - 今周刊 [The Hou brothers make their move: old-line Universal Cement succeeds in crossing into technology] (opens in a new window) (in Chinese)
- 畢業七天被叫回台救公司，台南幫第四代侯智元自剖接班18年淬鍊心得，如何帶環泥轉型變定存績優股！- 今周刊 [Called home to rescue the company seven days after graduating: Tainan Gang fourth-generation heir Hou Chih-yuan on 18 years of succession and turning Universal Cement into a steady dividend stock] (opens in a new window) (in Chinese)
- Jack Chih-Yuan Hou | LinkedIn (opens in a new window)
- 侯家祖墳藏玄機？賣過冥紙、做過雜工...台南幫祖師爺侯雨利如何從貧戶到巨富，催生統一、太子建設- 今周刊 [Secrets of the Hou family tomb? How Tainan Gang patriarch Hou Yu-li, who once sold joss paper and did odd jobs, went from poverty to great wealth and helped give rise to Uni-President and Prince Housing] (opens in a new window) (in Chinese)
- 環球水泥股份有限公司（統編 07568009）｜公司登記查詢 [Universal Cement Corporation (business ID 07568009) | company registration lookup] (opens in a new window) (in Chinese)
- 黃仁勳家族圖曝光！超微蘇姿丰、環泥董座皆為遠房親戚 - 自由財經 [Jensen Huang’s family chart revealed: AMD’s Lisa Su and Universal Cement’s chairman are both distant relatives] (opens in a new window) (in Chinese)