Pham Nhat Vuong, founder and chairman of Vietnam’s largest conglomerate, Vingroup, is ranked No. 93 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $27.7 billion. He was Vietnam’s first US-dollar billionaire.
Phạm Nhật Vượng was born on August 5, 1968, in Hanoi. His father served in the Vietnamese Army’s air defence division and his mother, from Haiphong, ran a tea shop, so the family had a very small income. He graduated from Kim Liên High School in 1985.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 93, with $27.7 billion
- Later estimate: Wikipedia says Forbes put him at $34.1 billion in April 2026
Moscow and Ukraine
In 1987 he entered Hanoi University of Mining and Geology and was sent to the Soviet Union on a scholarship, thanks to his mathematical ability, to study at the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute, from which he graduated in 1992. He then married Phạm Thu Hương, whom he had known since high school, and moved to Kharkiv, Ukraine. They have three children.
- 1990s: he started an instant-noodle restaurant business with borrowed money and then began producing noodles; the Mivina brand became popular with Ukrainians in the lean years after communism
- 1993: he founded Technocom, which became successful in dehydrated food products in Ukraine
- 2009: he sold Technocom to Nestlé for $150 million and returned to Vietnam
Vingroup
- 2003 and 2004: his first projects in Vietnam were the Vinpearl Resort in Nha Trang, which opened in 2003, and the Vincom City Towers in Hanoi, which opened in 2004
- 2007: Vincom listed on the stock market and merged with Vinpearl to form Vingroup, headquartered in Hanoi
- 2015: he was listed as the richest person in Vietnam
- January 2024: he became CEO of the electric carmaker VinFast
Why It Matters
Vingroup spans property, retail, hospitality and cars, and Vuong’s wealth is tied to the fortunes of Vingroup and VinFast, which has pushed Vietnam into global car manufacturing.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: The Vingroup Times City complex in Hanoi (file photo, 2018; Pham Nhat Vuong is not pictured). Photo: Nguyen QuocTrung / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
