BloombergBusinessweek December 7, 2020SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO,
CALIF. ○ Zipline drones
have delivered more than
15,000 bundles of personal
protective equipment to
Novant Health facilities in
North Carolina.
Drone deliveries are well-suited to a
pandemic: They can be deployed on
demand, and they don’t involve contact
between people. Zipline is making them
a reality in the U.S. In May the company
completed its first American delivery,
parachuting a box of face masks from
50 feet above to Novant’s Huntersville
Medical Center in suburban Charlotte. And
in September, Walmart Inc. announced itwould be using Zipline to deliver health
and wellness products directly to cus-
tomers in northwest Arkansas. Novant
and Walmart chose Zipline based on its
record in Africa, where it’s logged millions
of miles delivering blood, medicine, and
other supplies to hospitals and clinics in
Ghana and Rwanda. Rinaudo started the
company in 2014 after learning that emer-
gency requests from clinics there often
went unanswered.
Zipline’s autonomous, battery-
powered drones are launched from cata-
pults and carry parachute boxes weighing
as much as 4 pounds; they cruise at
60 mph and can fly as far as 100 miles,
round trip. A single distribution hub can
manage a fleet of about 30 and supply
an area of 8,000 square miles, delivering
as much as 2 tons of freight in a week.
—Ira BoudwayKELLER
RINAUDO
CO-FOUNDER
AND CEO, ZIPLINE
MARIA RESSA
CEO, RAPPLER INC.
FORREST LI
FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN,
AND GROUP CEO,
SEA LTD.SINGAPORE ○ Sea, now worth
about $83 billion, is the most valuable
company in Southeast Asia.Born in China, Li adopted the English name “Forrest”
after watching Forrest Gump; the warmth, persistence,
and courage of the title character appealed to him. In
June 2005, while he was getting his master’s degree at
Stanford, he attended his girlfriend’s graduation ceremony
at the school—the famous one at which Steve Jobs told
graduates that life’s dots can be connected only by look-
ing backward, not forward. Inspired, Li, who’d spent his
undergraduate days in Shanghai playing video games until
dawn, founded his online gaming company in Singapore in- He took it public in New York in 2017, by which point
it had added an e-commerce platform, Shopee.
Sea’s initial stock rally was fueled by the success of
the mobile game Free Fire, a battle-royal-style title that
had more than 100 million peak daily active users in the
second quarter. That success, combined with Shopee’s
emergence as a top online shopping site in Southeast
Asia, has swelled investor optimism that the unprofitable
company could one day become a mashup of gaming
giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. and e-commerce powerhouse
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Shares of Sea are up more
than 300% this year, boosting Li’s net worth to more than
$9 billion. —Yoolim Lee
PASIG CITY, PHILIPPINES ○
She faces up to six years in
prison after being found guilty
of “cyber libel” in a landmark
case for press freedom.
In June a judge ruled on the charge,
which can be initiated when a party who
believes he’s been defamed requests
a prosecution. The ask had come from
businessman Wilfredo Keng, who said
Rappler defamed him when the online
news site cited a report about his alleged
links to drug smuggling in a story.
Ressa is appealing the verdict, whichcritics of President Rodrigo Duterte say
is an example of political persecution.
He’s denied any role in the case, with his
spokesman calling it the result of “bad
journalism” and “bad lawyering.”
Ressa has won wide international
praise for investigations of alleged
police abuses in the president’s anti-
drug efforts. She’s carried on despite
what journalism advocates say is a
campaign of official intimidation, includ-
ing a tax evasion case and a claim by
regulators that financial support Rappler
received violated a ban on foreign owner-
ship of media. Free on bail, she’s fighting
all those allegations— and still publishing.
—Matthew Campbell70
RESSA: AARON FAVILA/AP PHOTO. RINAUDO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG. LI: WEI LENG TAY/BLOOMBERG. BHATT: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG. TENEV: TAYLOR HILL/GETTY IMAGES. KYOGOKU AND NOGAMI: COURTESY NINTENDO