Lucy Peng

She’s a cofounder of Alibaba and the woman who raised more money than any other female founder in history.

In 1999, Lucy Peng was teaching finance at Zhejiang University.

She had no tech background. No startup resume.

But when her husband joined Jack Ma to launch a new e-commerce venture, Peng quit her job and joined too.

She was one of the 18 original co-founders of Alibaba.

Her job? Build the culture.

She founded the HR department.

Developed Alibaba’s now-famous “mom and pop” management model.

One leader (“mom”) focused on culture, motivation, and cohesion.

The other (“pop”) focused on performance, KPIs, and discipline.

Alibaba grew fast.

And while the tech bros scaled servers and sales, Peng scaled leadership, communication, and company values.

When the dot-com crash hit in 2000, Alibaba nearly collapsed.

The founders slashed their own salaries.

Shut down most offices in China.

Fired entire global teams.

But even then, Peng focused on values.

She led discussions about “customer first,” “straightforwardness without harm,” and “partner responsibility.”

Her belief: a startup only survives if its culture does.

By 2010, she had proved herself as a foundational force inside Alibaba.

So Jack Ma gave her a new challenge: run Alipay.

It was originally just a payments tool inside Taobao, Alibaba’s marketplace.

But it wasn’t working well. Only 60% of transactions were successful.

In one year under Peng’s leadership, that jumped to 95%.

By 2014, Alipay had over 300M users and was China’s most trusted payments platform.

Then she spun out Alipay into a standalone company: Ant Financial (now Ant Group).

It wouldn’t just process payments.

It would build the financial infrastructure for all of China’s small businesses: mobile payments, lending, wealth management, insurance, credit scores.

In 2016, she raised $4.5B in the world’s largest private internet fundraising round, valuing Ant at $60B.

Over her tenure, she raised $22B in total, making her the most highly funded female founder in the world.

She then transitioned from CEO to Executive Chair in 2016, focusing on strategy and talent.

But in 2020, Ant Group prepared for the big one: a dual IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Valuation? $315B.

Target raise? $34.4B.

Then the Chinese government pulled the plug.

Just days before launch, regulators cited financial risks and halted the IPO.

Alibaba’s stock crashed.

Jack Ma disappeared from public life.

Peng didn’t.

She replaced Ma at events.

Handled government scrutiny.

Guided Ant through restructuring.

Led share buybacks.

And while steering Ant through chaos, she served as CEO of Lazada, its Southeast Asia arm, for nine months in 2018.

Her fingerprints are on almost every layer of Alibaba’s global rise.

And she’s done all this without ever becoming a celebrity founder.