Xie is co-founder and chief executive of Fortinet, a network security provider. The Sunnyvale, California-based company sells cyber-security software to more than 900,000 customers and analyzes over 100 billion potential security events daily. Fortinet reported revenue of $6.8 billion in 2025.
The majority of Xie's fortune is derived from his stake in Fortinet, the network security company he co-founded with his brother in 2000. Fortinet has more than 900,000 customers and analyzes over 100 billion potential security events daily, according to its website.
Xie owns about 9% of the business, or roughly 70 million shares, according to an April 2026 regulatory filing. Close to 12 million of those are held by the Xie Foundation, a non-profit where he serves as co-president.
He previously had founded, or co-founded, two different companies. The second of those, NetScreen, was sold to Juniper Networks for $4 billion in 2004. Two years before the deal, Xie owned about 5% of the business, a regulatory filing shows. Subsequent filings don't disclose whether he still held that stake when the transaction closed. Bloomberg assumes he sold the shares in the months following the final disclosure of his stake in 2002.
His cash holdings includes these proceeds and is based on an analysis of insider transactions, dividends, taxes and market performance.
John Welton, a Fortinet spokesman, didn't respond to a request for comment on the net worth calculation.
Xie was born in 1963 and grew up in Beijing. His parents both worked as professors and Xie, too, initially eyed a career in academia. He received two degrees in electronic engineering at Tsinghua University before moving to California to work on his PhD at Stanford University.
He founded his first company in 1993 and dropped out of school. Three years later he co-founded his second venture -- NetScreen Technologies -- with two other Tsinghua alumni. Xie served as CEO before leaving in September 1999. Juniper Networks later bought the company for $4 billion. Xie held a roughly 5% stake in the business a couple of years before the transaction; regulatory filings don't disclose whether he still held the shares when it closed.
In 2000, Xie teamed up with his brother Michael to found a network security company called Fortinet. The Sunnyvale, California-based company collected $6.8 billion in revenue in 2025. Xie holds a 9% stake in the business.
Xie became a US citizen in 1998. He has three children.