Soon-Shiong became a billionaire after selling two drug companies: APP Pharmaceuticals and Abraxis BioScience. He sold APP to Fresenius Medical Care for $4.6 billion in 2008, and Abraxis to Celgene for $2.8 billion in 2010. He owns the Los Angeles Times and a 4.5% stake in the Lakers professional basketball team.
Soon-Shiong's fortune is largely derived from the proceeds he accumulated selling two pharmaceutical companies.
He sold APP Pharmaceuticals for $4.6 billion to German drug manufacturer Fresenius in 2008. He collected $3.8 billion from the sale, in part thanks to an agreement that yielded him an extra $6 per share.
He later sold Abraxis BioScience for $2.9 billion in cash and stock to Celgene in 2010. He received about $2 billion in cash and a 2% stake in Celgene for his 33 million shares of Abraxis.
Soon-Shiong controls a range of different biotech companies that all are controlled by closely held NantWorks LLC. Two of the companies are publicly traded: ImmunityBio and NantHealth.
Soon-Shiong bought the Los Angeles Times for $500 million in 2018. The asset is valued using its purchase price and the cost was deducted from his cash balance. He also owns a 4.5% stake in the Los Angeles Lakers, the professional basketball team. He bought the stake from retired Lakers star Earvin "Magic" Johnson for $27 million in October 2010. The team is worth about $10 billion, based on a planned acquisition of a majority stake in the team by finance executive Mark Walter.
Katie Dodge, a spokesperson for Soon-Shiong, said the billionaire declined to comment on his net worth.
Soon-Shiong was born in 1952 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, as the son of Chinese immigrants parents. His father had worked as a village doctor before fleeing China with his wife after the Japanese invasion of China during World War II. A couple of years after receiving his medical degree from Wits University in Johannesburg in 1975, he and his wife, Michele, migrated to Canada.
In 1983, Soon-Shiong was recruited to the medical school faculty at University of California Los Angeles. He focused on diabetes treatment. He later set up a laboratory at the Veterans Affairs hospital in West Los Angeles to research a new ways to treat severe diabetics. Lee Iacocca, the auto executive, helped fund the effort and encouraged Soon-Shiong to commercialize his research.
Soon-Shiong left UCLA in 1991 and founded several companies focused on diabetes, chemotherapy and manufacturing of generic drugs, respectively. A company holding the right to make his chemotherapy drug, Abraxane, was sold to German drug manufacturer Fresenius in 2008 for $4.6 billion. Two years later, the generic drug maker was sold to Celgene for $2.8 billion.
Soon-Shiong bought a stake in the Los Angeles Lakers around the same time. He also was an early investor in Zoom, the video-call platform, and later purchased Tribune Publishing, the company that controls the Los Angeles Times. He told the New Yorker in 2021 that he likes to present himself as an "accidental billionaire."
More recently, Soon-Shiong focuses on a number of ventures organized under an entity called NantWorks. The group includes a company that builds medical software; a developer of immunotherapy treatments for cancer; and a movie studio.
Soon-Shiong has two children.