Zoom CEO Eric Yuan transferred 40% of his stock in the video-chat app in line with 'typical estate planning practices'
- Zoom CEO Eric Yuan transferred a stake worth $6 billion in the company on March 3, according to a filing.
- An SEC filing shows the transactions were recorded as two gifts of 9 million shares each.
- The transfers "are consistent with the Yuans' typical estate planning practices," a spokesperson said.
Zoom founder Eric Yuan transferred more than a third of his stake in the company last week after the video-conference app's shares surged last year.
Yuan's transactions were recorded as two gifts of 9 million shares each, valued at about $6 billion, to unspecified beneficiaries on March 3, according to a filing registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The transfers were made from two trusts for which Yuan and his wife are co-trustees, the filing showed.
"The distributions were made in accordance with the terms of Eric Yuan and his wife's trusts, and are consistent with the Yuans' typical estate planning practices," a Zoom spokesperson told Insider in an emailed statement.
Zoom's stock rose 3% in pre-market trading to $321.68 per share on Tuesday. Although its stock surged 400% last year, it is down 7.8% so far this year.
Yuan became one of the most prominent wealthy people during the pandemic when Zoom was among the best-performing stay-at-home stocks that gained the most as employees around the world shifted to remote working.
Yuan's idea for the video app came to him while he was a college freshman in China. When he was 27, the US denied his visa application eight times before he finally moved to California in 1997, according to Fortune. He could barely speak English at the time. Yuan is now the 130th-richest person in the world with a personal wealth of $15.1 billion, representing a 155% jump in the last 12 months, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Zoom's success led to the 51-year-old entrepreneur being named Time magazine's businessperson of the year in 2020.