Chinese Gaming Tycoon's 100-Kid Surrogacy Empire: Nanny Houses in California, Group Photos in China

A reclusive Chinese video-game billionaire has built one of the most extreme family operations on record - using American surrogates to produce U.S.-citizen children who are then raised by nannies on two continents.

Xu Bo, founder of Guangzhou gaming firm Duoyi Network, is the man at the center of the story. A December 2025 Wall Street Journal investigation and a fresh CBS News report this month laid out the scale: Xu's company has acknowledged "a little over 100" children through years of U.S. surrogacy. An ex-partner, Tang Jing, has claimed the real number is as high as 300. Xu disputes the higher figure and says he has custody of 12 children born through surrogacy in the United States.

Every child born on U.S. soil is an American citizen at birth.

Where the kids actually live? They do not live with Xu as a conventional family.

Chinese Gaming Tycoon's 100-Kid Surrogacy Empire: Nanny Houses in California, Group Photos in China

In a closed 2023 Los Angeles family-court hearing, Xu appeared by video from China. Court sources told the Journal that several of the children were then being raised by nannies in a home in Irvine, California, while awaiting paperwork to travel to China. Xu told the judge he had not yet met some of them because work had been busy. He said he wanted about 20 U.S.-born children - preferably boys - to one day take over his business.

A 2022 video posted by an account linked to Xu showed dozens of young boys in a large California residence leaping up and running toward the camera yelling "Daddy."

Many of the children now appear to be in China. Accounts tied to Xu and Duoyi have posted photos and videos of large groups of kids in classroom- or daycare-style settings with nannies. One widely circulated image - posted on the company's Weibo and later shown by CBS to a current surrogate - shows roughly 100 young children seated in rows. Chinese reports have described private tutors and one nanny per child.

Tang Jing has said she helped raise 13 of Xu's children in Japan, including two daughters she described as theirs and 11 born through surrogacy, and that she is currently raising 11 of them amid a bitter custody and money fight. She has also claimed the children live across properties in multiple countries.

Xu himself lives in China and is described as a recluse. He is not reported to be day-to-day parenting the full group.

The latest twist

This weekend, CBS News told a U.S. surrogate - identified only as "Judy" - that leaked documents named Xu as the intended father of the baby she is carrying. She said she had been told she was working for a single father expanding his family. She had not been told the reported scale of the operation.

Xu's company has pushed back on parts of the Journal account, including the claim that he told a judge boys were "superior." It has also said only 12 of the 100-plus children were born in the U.S. under his custody. The exact headcount, and who has legal parental rights to every child, remains disputed.

What is not disputed: U.S.-born kids get citizenship. The rest of their childhood is being outsourced to staff in California, China, and, according to Tang, Japan.