Patrick Soon-Shiong is a South African-born physician, surgeon, scientist, and billionaire biotech entrepreneur whose medical breakthroughs have reshaped cancer treatment for patients around the world. Best known for developing Abraxane — a revolutionary nanoparticle-based chemotherapy drug — and for founding the healthcare technology conglomerate NantWorks, Soon-Shiong built his fortune at the intersection of cutting-edge science and shrewd business strategy. As of 2025, his net worth is estimated at approximately $6.7 billion by Forbes, making him one of the wealthiest physicians in the world. His career is a rare example of a practicing scientist who translated laboratory discoveries directly into billion-dollar commercial success while continuing to push the boundaries of what medicine can do.
Early Life & Background
Patrick Soon-Shiong was born on July 29, 1952, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to Chinese immigrant parents who had fled the turmoil of mid-century China. Growing up during the apartheid era gave him an early, personal understanding of inequality in healthcare access — a theme that would later drive much of his philanthropic and scientific work. He demonstrated exceptional academic ability from childhood and enrolled in medical school at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, graduating with his medical degree in 1975 at the age of 23. He completed his surgical internship and residency in South Africa before immigrating to Canada, where he completed a surgical fellowship at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He subsequently moved to the United States, completing a fellowship in pancreatic surgery at UCLA, where he joined the faculty and eventually became a tenured professor of surgery at the UCLA School of Medicine. It was in the research labs and operating rooms of UCLA that his scientific career truly took shape.
Career & Rise to Success
Soon-Shiong’s first major breakthrough came in the early 1990s when he performed the first successful islet cell transplantation procedures in the United States, offering a new approach to treating Type 1 diabetes by transplanting insulin-producing cells rather than entire pancreases. This pioneering work established his reputation as a surgical innovator willing to attempt what others considered impossible. He then founded American Pharmaceutical Partners (APP), a specialty injectable pharmaceuticals company, which he grew into a significant business before selling it to the German firm Fresenius SE for approximately $4.6 billion in 2008. Meanwhile, he had founded Abraxis BioScience, where his team developed Abraxane — a formulation that binds the chemotherapy agent paclitaxel to albumin nanoparticles, dramatically improving its delivery to tumors while reducing side effects. After Abraxane received FDA approval in 2005, Soon-Shiong sold Abraxis to Celgene Corporation in 2010 for $2.9 billion in cash and stock, crystallizing one of the most lucrative exits in biotech history. He subsequently founded NantWorks in 2011 as an umbrella organization for a new generation of AI-driven healthcare ventures.
Major Achievements
Soon-Shiong’s achievements span medicine, biotechnology, and media in ways that are almost without parallel among his peers. Abraxane became a cornerstone treatment for metastatic breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and pancreatic cancer, extending and improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide. His early islet transplantation work opened a field of research that continues to generate scientific progress decades later. NantHealth, one of his NantWorks subsidiaries, went public on the Nasdaq in 2016. He was named to Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list and has received numerous honorary doctorates and medical awards. In 2018, he made headlines outside of healthcare when he purchased the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune from Tribune Publishing for approximately $500 million, becoming one of the few billionaires to invest in major metropolitan newspapers during a period of industrywide decline.
Income Sources & Business Ventures
Soon-Shiong’s wealth today flows primarily from his ownership interests in the NantWorks ecosystem, a private conglomerate of companies applying artificial intelligence and data science to healthcare challenges. Key entities within NantWorks include NantHealth (Nasdaq: NH), which provides clinical decision-support platforms; NantKwest (now ImmunityBio), a clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on cancer and infectious diseases; and NantOmics, a genomics analysis firm. He also owns the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune, adding media ownership to his portfolio. During his career he held a minority ownership stake in the Los Angeles Lakers NBA franchise. His income derives from a combination of biotech investment returns, dividends and management fees from private companies, real estate holdings in California, and ongoing royalties and licensing arrangements related to Abraxane and other pharmaceutical innovations.
Assets & Lifestyle
Soon-Shiong maintains a relatively private lifestyle, especially by the standards of Southern California billionaires. He owns residential properties in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, one of the city’s most exclusive addresses. His professional life remains intensely focused on scientific research and corporate strategy — he is known for working long hours and maintaining a hands-on role in the direction of his companies despite their scale and complexity. He travels by private aircraft given the demands of managing enterprises across multiple cities. His media investments have kept him in the public eye more than he might otherwise prefer, particularly as the Los Angeles Times navigated difficult financial headwinds that led to significant newsroom reductions in 2024.
Philanthropy & Giving Back
Soon-Shiong’s philanthropic activities are channeled primarily through the Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation, established with his wife Michele Chan. The foundation has funded cancer research programs, provided scholarships for students pursuing careers in science and medicine, and supported community health initiatives in underserved neighborhoods of Los Angeles. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Soon-Shiong and his companies contributed personal protective equipment and research resources to the public health response, and ImmunityBio advanced COVID-19 vaccine candidates. His financial support helped rebuild the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital health system in South Los Angeles — an institution serving one of the city’s most underserved populations — a project he described as deeply personal given his background growing up under apartheid and his medical career treating patients regardless of their ability to pay.
Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Net Worth in 2025
As of 2025, Patrick Soon-Shiong’s net worth is estimated at approximately $6.7 billion according to Forbes, placing him firmly among the wealthiest physicians and biotech entrepreneurs in the world. His net worth has fluctuated in recent years alongside the market valuations of his publicly traded NantWorks subsidiaries, particularly ImmunityBio, whose share price has been volatile as the company advances clinical trials for its cancer immunotherapy pipeline. The bulk of his wealth remains tied to private holdings within the NantWorks umbrella, which are more difficult to value precisely than public equities. His media assets, while strategically significant, are not primary drivers of net worth in an industry under persistent financial pressure. Despite the fluctuations, Soon-Shiong’s combination of pharmaceutical royalties, biotech equity, and real estate keeps his fortune in the multi-billion-dollar range by any credible estimate.
Conclusion
Patrick Soon-Shiong’s journey from the hospitals of apartheid-era South Africa to the executive suites of Los Angeles represents one of the most remarkable stories of immigrant ambition and scientific achievement in modern American life. He has succeeded simultaneously as a practicing surgeon, a laboratory researcher, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, a technology investor, and a media owner — a combination almost without precedent. His development of Abraxane alone would be a sufficient legacy for most careers, but Soon-Shiong has continued pressing forward into immunotherapy, artificial intelligence, and the rebuilding of American journalism. For aspiring entrepreneurs in medicine and biotechnology, his story demonstrates that the path from scientific discovery to generational wealth is both possible and, in the right hands, world-changing.
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