Alibaba and Ant Group Founder Jack Ma Hasn't Been Seen for 2 MonthsThe Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is thought to be missing, Jessica Yun reported for Yahoo Finance on Sunday.

Jack Ma, the 56-year-old billionaire founder of Alibaba and Ant Group,hasn't been seen publicly in more than two months, Jessica Yun reported for Yahoo Finance on Sunday.

Ma has been in the spotlight recently as China has cracked down on his business empire. In late December, Chinese regulatorslaunched an antitrust investigation into Alibaba, the country's biggest e-commerce company, sometimes referred to as "the Amazon of China." And in November, China introduced regulations that halted what would have beena massive initial public offering for Ant Group, Ma's fintech company.

The new rules came weeks after Macriticized China's financial regulatory systemat a conference in Shanghai. Ma reportedly dismissed the global financial regulations used by China as "an old people's club" and said that "we can't use yesterday's methods to regulate the future."

Blair Silverberg, the CEO of the debt-financing startup Capital,told Business Insider's Katie Canales in Novemberthat the regulations were introduced "so the government can assert its supremacy over Jack Ma."

In November, Ma was replaced as a judge on the African talent show he founded, "Africa's Business Heroes,"the Financial Times reported. The talent show did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, but an Alibaba representative said Ma could no longer be on the judging panel for the show's finale, which was filmed in November but has not yet been released," due to a scheduling conflict."

"We do not have anything to add beyond that," the representative said in response to questions about Ma's whereabouts.

Mastepped down as Alibaba's chairmanin 2019.

Until recently, Ma wasChina's richest man, with a fortune of more than $60 billion. But Ma's net worth hastaken a $12 billion hitover the past two months as China has tightened the rules for the fintech industry. Ma is now worth $50.6 billion, making him the fourth-richest person in China,according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

As speculation about Ma's whereabouts spread, a prediction about Ma from another billionaire Chinese businessman recirculated on social media.

Ina video interview in August 2019, Guo Wengui,who fled China as a fugitive in 2014and has described himself as a whistleblower exposing corruption in the country, said Ma would likely end up in jail or dead in the next year because China wanted to "take back" Ma's lucrative Ant Group.

Last week, the Chinese government ordered Ant Group, which owns Alipay, China's largest digital-payment platform,to scale back its operationsafter expressing concerns that its corporate governance was "not sound."

A representative for Ant Group did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment for this story.