{"id":862970,"date":"2026-06-09T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=862970"},"modified":"2026-06-09T15:45:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T13:45:50","slug":"gqeberha-born-man-who-finished-school-at-16-and-is-now-the-richest-man-in-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/862970\/gqeberha-born-man-who-finished-school-at-16-and-is-now-the-richest-man-in-los-angeles\/","title":{"rendered":"Gqeberha-born man who finished school at 16, and is now the richest man in Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Patrick Soon-Shiong left South Africa after completing high school aged 16 and medical school at 23, and is now the richest man in Los Angeles with a net worth of $8.4 billion (R139.1 billion).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha, in 1952, Soon-Shiong is one of the wealthiest doctors in the world and among the richest people in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His parents fled China following the Japanese invasion and settled in South Africa, where they worked as shopkeepers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His father was also a herbalist. Growing up under apartheid, Soon-Shiong has described his childhood as strangely normal, explaining that as a Chinese South African, he was classified as neither black nor white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the racial restrictions of the era, he grew up with friends from different communities and excelled academically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He completed high school at just 16 and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand medical school at age 23, finishing among the top students in a class of 200.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a Chinese doctor, he needed government permission to practise and earned only half the salary of some of his peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While studying medicine, he met his future wife, actress Michele B. Chan, at a basketball game. The couple married in 1977 and moved to Canada, where Soon-Shiong began his medical career in North America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After completing his residency training, he joined the University of California system and became the youngest professor of surgery at UCLA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the age of 30, he had already performed pioneering pancreas and kidney transplant procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon-Shiong later shifted his focus to islet cell transplantation, a less invasive treatment for patients with type 1 diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After taking a sabbatical, he successfully carried out one of the first such procedures at St. Vincent Medical Centre in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although he earned international recognition as a surgeon, it was biotechnology that ultimately made him a billionaire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon-Shiong didn’t forget about South Africa <\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
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President Cyril Ramaphosa and Soon-Shiong at the launch of NantSA in South Africa in 2022.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In 1991, he left academia to launch the biotechnology company VivoRx. He later founded APP Pharmaceuticals and subsequently established Abraxis BioScience, where he developed Abraxane, a breakthrough cancer treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The drug improved the delivery of the chemotherapy agent paclitaxel by binding it to a protein that helped target tumours more effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abraxane became particularly important in the treatment of pancreatic cancer and generated billions of dollars in revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon-Shiong sold APP Pharmaceuticals in 2008 and Abraxis BioScience in 2010 for a combined $9.1 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His interests have since expanded far beyond medicine. He became a minority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers in 2010 and entered the media industry in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This happened when his investment firm acquired the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune in a deal valued at nearly $500 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite spending most of his adult life abroad, Soon-Shiong has maintained strong ties to South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, he joined Cyril Ramaphosa to announce NantSA, a venture aimed at strengthening vaccine development and pharmaceutical manufacturing on the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The initiative led to the launch of a major vaccine manufacturing campus in Cape Town in 2022 in partnership with the South African government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The facility focused on advanced mRNA and T-cell vaccine technologies and is designed to support the production of treatments and vaccines for diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The region has successfully drawn major international capital. Biovac recently secured a R1.8 billion ($110 million) financing package backed by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new vaccine manufacturing hubs are transforming the Western Cape into the biotech capital of Africa, driving billions in foreign direct investment and creating thousands of jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biovac Institute\u2019s massive expansion alone is scaling to double its internal workforce, adding over 340 specialised jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The construction, supply chain, and auxiliary services surrounding the new Biovac site are projected to generate roughly 7,000 indirect jobs across the province.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forbes estimated that his net worth has climbed to $8.4 billion (R139.1 billion) in 2026, ranking as the 308th richest man in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Soon-Shiong remains deeply involved in both healthcare and business. Through his company ImmunityBio, he is advancing new cancer immunotherapy treatments while also overseeing efforts to modernise the Los Angeles Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The man who left South Africa after completing high school aged 16 and medical school at 23, and is now the richest man in Los Angeles with a net worth R139.1 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":862977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[25560,21626,21623,853],"class_list":["post-862970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-los-angeles","tag-nantsa","tag-patrick-soon-shiong","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862970"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862986,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862970\/revisions\/862986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}