Zhou is the chairman of Range Intelligent Computing Technology Group, a data center and computing services provider. The Langfang, Hebei-based company reported revenue of 4.4 billion yuan ($606 million) in 2024. She founded the firm in 2009 and took it public through a backdoor listing in September 2022.
The majority of Zhou's fortune is derived from her stake in Range Intelligent Computing Technology Group. The company reported revenue of 4.4 billion yuan ($606 million) in 2024. ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, accounted for more than 60% of Range Intelligent's revenue as of October 2021, according to a June 2023 report.
Zhou owns 56% of the company directly and through two investment vehicles, according to the company's 2025 third-quarter report. The shares held by her son Li Li and daughter-in-law Zhang Xian are credited to Zhou to reflect her status as the company's founder. About 5% of her stake is pledged and excluded in the net worth calculation.
The value of her cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance.
The analysis was updated on Jan. 23, 2026 to reflect Zhou's pledged shares and latest shareholding. This led to a decrease in the net worth calculation of about $1.2 billion.
Shen Jingwei, a spokesperson for the company, didn't respond to a request for comment on the net worth calculation.
Zhou was born in October 1960 in Hengyang city of Hunan province. Her given name, "Chaonan," literally means "surpassing males." It was inspired by a quote from Mao Zedong, then chairman of the Communist Party of China -- "Women can hold up half the sky."
After graduating from the university in 1982, she was assigned a teaching role at the commerce bureau in a local county. Zhou worked 10 years in an oil and grain transfer station until 1993 and then a manager at a province-owned merchant company from 1994 to 2000.
In 2000, Zhou established her first company, Tiantong Communication Network. Range Technology Development, her second company, was founded in August 2009. Range Technology Development became a unit of Range Intelligent Computing Technology Group in 2022 after a restructuring. The group began trading on the Shenzhen stock exchange in September of the same year through a backdoor listing.
Zhou's third company, Gonghui Yijia, was established in 2018 to provide data-based logistic solutions to truck drivers in China.