Who is the billionaire who paid $125 million for a piece of the Dolphins?

Michael Butler and Barry Jackson, Miami Herald on Mar 5, 2026

Published in Football

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MIAMI — The Miami Dolphins have a new minority owner. And he’s not an entertainer or pro athlete.

Billionaire Lin Bin and Dolphins owner Stephen Ross have agreed on a deal in which the businessman will pay $125 million for his stake.

Don’t worry about his bank account going to a zero balance. According to Forbes, Lin has a net worth of $10.6 billion.

Here’s what to know:

Who is Lin Bin?

Lin Bin, 64, is famous for co-founding Xiaomi, a Beijing-based tech company, in 2010. Xiaomi is the third-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world behind Apple and Samsung.

Lin started his career at Microsoft, where he worked on the Internet Explorer browser, and also was an engineering director at Google and served as vice president of Google China’s Engineering Research Institute. He made a fortune with Xiaomi.

What to know about the Dolphins deal

Lin and Ross agreed in principle to a deal, which is not yet finalized, for Chinese American businessman to buy 1% of the Dolphins, Hard Rock Stadium, the F-1 race, the Miami Open tennis tournament and everything that falls under the Dolphins parent company umbrella.

That means the Dolphins, stadium, and other parts of the company, were valued at $12.5 billion in the transaction, and Sportico reported that’s a record 1% valuation for a publicly known transaction in sports.

Ross, 85, has an estimated net worth of $17 billion and has been the majority owner of the Dolphins for 17 years. The Dolphins have been to the playoffs five times during that time and lost all five games.