A tech elite educated at Tsinghua University, with experience at Google and Microsoft, how did he end up being sued by his former employer for 200 million yuan? This story might shed some light on that.

In early 2020, Chen Lei chose to go abroad. He never returned—at least not until the investigation was completed. By January 2026, Xunlei and its subsidiary Wangxin Technology officially took action, filing a lawsuit against Chen Lei and his team for "liability for damages to company interests," seeking compensation of 2 billion yuan. The Shenzhen court has already accepted and filed the case.

This did not come out of nowhere. As early as 2020, Chen Lei was investigated for allegedly embezzling company assets through fabricated transactions and false contracts, and misappropriating tens of millions of yuan for illegal cryptocurrency trading. After choosing to leave the country, criminal investigations were temporarily halted due to difficulties in gathering evidence—highlighting the practical challenges of cross-border evidence collection.

It's hard not to notice that Chen Lei was a typical representative of a technical elite. He started programming in high school, studied computer science at Tsinghua, pursued further studies in the U.S., and worked at Google and Microsoft before joining Tencent. When he joined Xunlei as CTO in 2014, the company was struggling with declining download services. With his expertise in distributed and cloud computing, he became a firefighter figure. From 2015 to 2017, he served as co-CEO, and in July 2017, he was promoted to CEO and director.

From this perspective, the entire process of Xunlei's involvement in the crypto space somewhat reflects the wild growth phase of early Chinese internet companies in this field—lacking regulation, insufficient risk awareness, and internal governance vulnerabilities. A technical expert ending up here is not only a personal tragedy but also a microcosm of the early chaos in the industry.