Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of Alibaba, hasn't been seen in two months after the Chinese government cracked down on his companies. Here's a timeline of his fall from grace.

Ma, who was born with the name Ma Yun - was born on September 10, 1964, in Hangzhou, southeastern China.

Ma was rejected for more than a dozen jobs before starting to work as an English teacher, and said in 2016 that he had been rejected from Harvard 10 times.

He founded Alibaba in 1999. It grew to become the world's largest B2B e-commerce marketplace in the world, and has the world's largest shopping event.

Alibaba's 2014 IPO was at the time the largest in history.

The IPO also made Ma the richest person in China, with a net worth of around $25 billion at the time.

Ma's wealth has grown since, but he has dropped to the fourth-richest man in China, as other people eclipsed even his net worth of some $50 billion.

Source: Bloomberg Billionaires Index

Ma founded Ant Group, formerly called Ant Financial, in 2014. The company is an affiliate of Alibaba, and owns digital payment platform Alipay.

On October 24, when Ant Group was gearing up for an IPO, Ma criticized China's financial regulatory system, saying China was following global rules that are part of "an old people's club."

As Business Insider's Katie Canales previously reported, Ma said that the rules that govern global banking aren't well-suited for Chinese tech innovation.

He said: "We can't use yesterday's methods to regulate the future."

The Guardian noted that his last public event seems to have been a livestream for the launch of a shopping event on October 31.

Source: The Guardian

On November 2, China introduced new regulations that halted the Ant Group IPO.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Ma offered to give parts of Ant Group to the Chinese government when meeting them on November 2, but China still went ahead with the rule change.

And later in November, Ma was replaced as a judge on final episode of a talent show he founded, "Africa's Business Heroes," the Financial Times reported.

The FT noted that Ma's photo was removed from the show's webpage and he wasn't included in the promotional video.

An Alibaba spokesperson blamed scheduling conflicts: "Due to a schedule conflict Mr Ma could no longer be part of the finale judge panel of Africa's Business Heroes earlier this year (2020)."

And an Alibaba spokesperson told Business Insider that they had nothing else to add when asked about Ma's whereabouts: "We do not have anything to add beyond that."

On December 23, Chinese regulators launched an antitrust investigation into Alibaba. Ma still owns a 8.9% stake in the company.

And on December 28, China told Ant Group to limit its ambitions and focus on payment services instead of insurance or wealth management.

Ant Group said in a statement that it would establish a "rectification working group" to do as the regulator asked.

CNBC reported on Tuesday that sources said Ma was deliberately lying low, and was not missing.

A person familiar with the matter told CNBC's David Faber that Ma was deliberately staying out of the spotlight.