Joseph Tsai

Tsai was born in Taipei, Taiwan, where he spent his childhood. His father, Paul C. Tsai (蔡中曾), was a prominent waishengren lawyer who was raised in Shanghai, China, and moved to Taiwan in 1948 before earning his doctorate in law from Yale Law School in 1957. After returning to Taiwan, the elder Tsai held several government positions and helped develop legislation intended to promote foreign investment and economic development. In 1965, Paul and his father, Ruchin Tsar, established Tsar & Tsai, Taiwan's first partnership law firm.

As a child, Tsai completed his early schooling in Taipei. He spent a year attending an English-language cram school in Taiwan and skipped seventh grade. In 1977, at the age of 13, he moved to the United States to attend the Lawrenceville School, a private boarding school in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. During his five years at the school, from 1977 to 1982, Tsai played on the varsity football and lacrosse teams, contributed sports writing to student publications, and performed with the school's glee club.

After graduating from Lawrenceville, Tsai attended Yale University. As an undergraduate, he joined the university's men's lacrosse team as a walk-on. He graduated from Yale College in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts in economics and East Asian studies. He then earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale Law School in 1990. As a law student, served as an editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review.

Tsai became a tax associate at the white-shoe law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell after graduation and was admitted as an attorney to the New York bar on 6 May 1991. After three years at the law firm, he switched to private equity and joined Rosecliff, Inc., a small management buyout firm based in New York, as vice president and general counsel. He left for Hong Kong in 1995 to join the Swedish Wallenberg family's investment conglomerate Investor AB, where he was responsible for its Asian private equity investments.

It was in this role that he first met Jack Ma in 1999 in Hangzhou after being introduced by a friend who was trying to sell his own company to Ma. Tsai was impressed with Ma's idea to create an international import and export marketplace, Ma's charismatic personality, and the enthusiasm of Ma's friends and employees. Soon after meeting Ma, Tsai quit Investor AB and joined Alibaba's founding team. He eventually held the roles of chief operating officer, chief financial officer, executive vice chairman and founding board member. Drawing from his background in corporate law and finance, Tsai led efforts to establish Alibaba's financial and legal structure. He became Alibaba's executive vice chairman in 2013 and became chairman of the company in 2023. He has become the second-largest individual shareholder of Alibaba after Ma. Tsai's net worth in 2022 was estimated to be US$8.1 billion. In 2025, he was ranked #8 on Forbes list of Hong Kong's 50 Richest, with an estimated net worth of $11.8 billion.

He was married to Clara Wu Tsai, a granddaughter of Wu San-lien, the first elected mayor of Taipei City. Tsai and Wu have three children. Tsai's family now primarily resides in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California. Tsai primarily resides in Hong Kong and spends much of his time there for business. In January 2022, Tsai paid $188 million for a penthouse at 220 Central Park South. The Tsais announced their divorce on August 1, 2026.

In March 2016, Tsai donated $30 million to his alma mater, Yale Law School, in honor of his father to support the continuing work of the Law School's China Center and renamed it Paul Tsai China Center.

In May 2017, Tsai and his wife, through the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation, made another donation to Yale for the construction, launch, and programs of the center and named it Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking.

In June 2017, the Tsais, again through the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation, made a donation to his high school, the Lawrenceville School, in Mercer County, New Jersey, which was the single largest gift the school ever received. Tsai is a member of Lawrenceville's board of trustees.

In late March and early April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tsais donated 2.6 million masks, 170,000 goggles and 2,000 ventilators to New York. On 20 April 2020, they donated $1.6 million in medical supplies to UC San Diego to be used and shared with the region's health care systems and hospitals.

In August 2020, the Tsais donated $50 million to social justice and economic equality initiatives to support BIPOC causes.

In late 2020, the Tsais committed to contribute $50 million to Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic to facilitate the accelerated acoustical renovation of David Geffen Hall. On 3 August 2022, Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic announced the naming of the concert hall as the Wu Tsai Theater, as well as the naming of a Wu Tsai Series of concerts celebrating interdisciplinary works from diverse voices.

In February 2021, the Tsais made a donation to Yale University to establish the Wu Tsai Institute, focused on to the study of human cognition.

In July 2021, the Tsais debuted the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance and pledged $220 million to the foundation to fund teams of experts and academics from Stanford University, the University of Kansas, the University of Oregon, University of California, San Diego, Boston Children's Hospital and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

On 7 October 2019, Tsai weighed in after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted a tweet supporting protesters in Hong Kong. In an open letter to all NBA fans on his Facebook page, Tsai explained, with reference to historical foreign invasions of China, that Morey's tweet triggered a strong negative sentiment in China against territorial losses, especially those perceived to have been caused or escalated by foreign entities, and separatist movements.