), is the first attempted by a Chinese technology start-up on New York Stock Exchange, the traditional venue for much weightier Chinese stocks. Estimates for the IPO size range from as little as $100 million to as much as $400 million. In a span of less than three years, Giant Interactive has risen to become China s fifth-largest online games provider by revenue in a $815 million market, and its primary product, ZT Online, was an instant hit, ranking as the most popular online game in China in 2006, the year of Giant s commercial launch, according to the company, citing data from international consultancy IDC.
In his previous venture, Shi created a huge following for the Zhuhai Giant Hi-Tech Group in 1991, based on the popularity of single videogame he developed. Zhuhai Giant collapsed under the weight of massive debt incurred for the development of a 70-story skyscraper that was never constructed. Despite the flop, Shi continued to capture the Chinese tech world s imagination in the intervening years owing to the wide respect he commanded as China s most successful software gaming programmer in the early 1990s.
His latest comeback with Giant Interactive is a return to his professional roots. Shi received a bachelor s degree in mathematics from the academic cradle of China s software industry, Zhejiang University, and completed a master s degree in science from Shenzhen University.
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