Tianqiao Chen
Tianqiao Chen is the founder, chairman and CEO of Shanda Group; he co-founded the online games company Shanda in 1999, later co-founded the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for brain science research with Chrissy Luo, and has in recent years turned to artificial intelligence.
Contents9 sections
Key facts
1999Founding Shanda
According to Shanda Group’s website, Tianqiao Chen and Chrissy Luo founded Shanda Interactive Entertainment in Shanghai in November 1999. A Caltech profile says the company went on to become China’s largest online entertainment developer and publisher.[1][2]
In their founders’ letter, the two say they established the first virtual community for online gaming users in 1999 and that it grew to hundreds of millions of users within five years.[3]
2012Taking Shanda Private
Shanda Group’s website says that since 1999 three of the group’s subsidiaries have listed on NASDAQ and one on South Korea’s KOSDAQ, and that in 2012 Tianqiao Chen took Shanda’s parent company private, after which the group became a global investment company. A 2017 ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry report likewise says Shanda Interactive was taken private in 2012.[4][5]
Shanda Group’s milestones page, however, lists 2014 as the year it became a private investment firm.[1]
2016Founding the Chen Institute and a Gift to Caltech
According to Caltech, in late 2016 Tianqiao Chen and Chrissy Luo created the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute and committed US$1 billion to advancing fundamental understanding of the brain.[2]
2017–2018Funding Brain Disease Research in Shanghai
Forbes reported in November 2017 that he would make an initial gift of about US$8 million (RMB 50 million) for research linked to Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, with about RMB 500 million promised later, covering brain tumors, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and depression among other conditions; the report also said he had moved from Singapore to the San Francisco area to be closer to the institute at Caltech.[5]
The Chen Institute’s website says the Tianqiao Chen Institute for Brain Health was established in April 2018.[6]
2023–2024An “All-In AI” Strategy
A Shanda Group press release dated October 23, 2024 said Tianqiao Chen had announced an “All-In AI StrategyStrategyStrategy (formerly MicroStrategy) is a Nasdaq-listed company (ticker MSTR) headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States, founded in 1989 by Michael Saylor and originally built on enterprise analytics software. Since 2020, the company has used bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset and describes itself as the world’s first and largest Bitcoin Treasury Company; as of September 27, 2026, it held 847,666 bitcoins. Its current Chief Executive Officer is Phong Le.Open the full entry” the previous year; it said OMNE, a long-term-memory multi-agent framework developed by Shanda and the Chen Institute, topped the GAIA leaderboard with an overall success rate of 40.53%.[8]
October 2025Presenting “Discoverative” Intelligence at AIAS2025
According to a press release dated October 28, 2025, he spoke at the AIAS2025 symposium in San Francisco, arguing that the fundamental value of AI lies in discovery and saying he would commit more than $1 billion for compute clusters prioritized for structural experiments. The event was organized by the Chen Institute in partnership with the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society.[9][10]
As of October 2026: Chairman and CEO of Shanda Group
Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts
Shanda Group: Official website: https://www.shanda.com/ (opens in a new window)[4]
Shanda Group: Official account: https://x.com/shanda_group (opens in a new window)[4]
Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute: Official website: https://www.cheninstitute.org/ (opens in a new window)[6]
Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute: Official account: https://x.com/ChenInstitute (opens in a new window)[6]
Fudan University: Official website: https://www.fudan.edu.cn/ (opens in a new window)[4]
Sources
- Milestones (opens in a new window)
- Meet the Chens (opens in a new window)
- A letter from Tianqiao Chen and Chrissy Luo (opens in a new window)
- Tianqiao Chen (opens in a new window)
- With A New Gift, Chinese Games Billionaire Takes Step To Treat Brain Diseases (opens in a new window)
- About (opens in a new window)
- China's Rising Philanthropy Presents the Next Big Brain Science Donor (opens in a new window)
- Shanda and the Chen Institute's OMNE Framework for Long-term AI Memory Claims Top Spot on GAIA Leaderboard (opens in a new window)
- Serial Entrepreneur Tianqiao Chen Presents Vision for “Discoverative” Intelligence at AIAS2025 (opens in a new window)
- AIAS2025 (opens in a new window)
- The Twilight of Management and the Dawn of Intelligence: Rewriting the Biological Genes of Enterprises (opens in a new window)