Who the heck is Giants owner William Chang anyway?

Another real estate guy! Gosh, it's like real estate can make you a lot of money or something

This is the fifteenth installment in our series on who exactly owns the Giants. So far, we have covered real estate mogul Scott Seligman, private equity guy Phil Halperin, real estate mogul Jed Walentas, medical technology investor David Schnell, radio station owner/former Yahoo board member Arthur Kern (now no longer listed as an owner), lady of mystery Nancy Olsen, Republican super-donor Charles Johnson, Manila business mogul George Drysdale, charter school supporter Paul Wythes, Jr., Hong Kong real estate guy Philip Morais, former professional athlete Buster Posey, Rich Tech Guy Aneel Bhusri, private equity fund Arctos Sports Partners, Hawaiian real estate mogul Duane Kurisu, and finance/charter school guy John Scully. Let’s take a look at the big board!

Isn’t she majestic? What an accomplishment!

Today’s subject: William Chang.

Hey, there he is! How’s it going, big guy?

William Chang was born in Japan on May 8,1956 (maybe — the site I got that birthday from is possibly not super reliable, but 1956 is correct), making him currently 68 years old. His father was TM Chang, a Chinese business man (we’ll get back to him later) who moved to Japan in the post-war years and married a Japanese woman named Yoshie Fujino in 1955. Together, they had five children, with William being the oldest of them.

In the late ‘60s, TM Chang sold the company he had founded in Japan and moved to the United States, where he founded another real estate company called Westlake, with the idea that he would be able to rent office space to tech companies and make a tidy profit. The idea went well enough that he brought in William, who had gone to high school at the Millfield School in Somerset County, England, and then got a Bachelor’s in Economics at Harvard, to work with him at Westlake in 1978, shortly after he finished that Economics degree.

In his early years with Westlake, the company executed its first residential project, expanded in China, named William the President of Westlake Builders, its nascent construction arm, executed its first commercial project, and in 1989, built the Golden Bridge Mansion, which was at the time the tallest building in Shanghai. In 2001, William became Chairman and CEO, and around that time the company liquidated its Chinese business. The company would continue to expand its business and develop more properties, and in keeping with its history as a family business, brought in William’s daughter Kristina Chang and Kelly Chang Levine — also a member of the family, though I couldn’t find anything specifically saying she was another daughter of William’s — to be part of the leadership team for the next generation.

What does Westlake develop? Properties. Residential, commercial, tech campuses, hotels. They started creating an empire for themselves in the ‘70s, and here they are, in 2025, with an empire.

Empires create money, of course, and what has William done with his money? I’ll tell you: he has invested in sports teams. He bought into the Giants in 2006, purchasing what Forbes called a 5% stake in the team, which (per their numbers) would have cost around $20 million. Being on USA Rugby’s Board of Directors, Chang was responsible for the 2018 Rugby World Cup Sevens being played at AT&T Park in San Francisco. He also bought into MLS’s DC United in 2007 with partners, eventually buying them out in 2009 for a 100% stake in the team. He then sold a majority share of the United in 2012, and fully sold his share in 2016. He also at least considered buying into the English Premier League, but appears to have decided not to.

There was a Giants-Nationals series in 2007 in which Chang was able to get the Giants use of United’s big clubhouse in RFK Stadium instead of the small, crappy regular visitor’s clubhouse. The Giants still lost 2 out of 3, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

There are also a couple baseball-adjacent movies you might remember that Chang had a hand in. Chang “conceived and financed” the documentary Gigante about Andres Torres’s ADHD diagnosis, and how his decision to finally take medication for it jump started his career. He also was responsible for the Million Dollar Arm contest, in which two reality show winners in India signed professional baseball contracts to try to make it to the majors. While neither of them did make it, the contest did turn into a movie starring Jon Hamm, so that’s pretty good too. Chang and a business partner named Ash Vasudevan started a production company called Aspire Entertainment in the wake of that success, but it doesn’t look like it ever produced anything.

Politically, I can’t find anything recent on Chang’s donations. There are a lot of Will Changs who have made political donations over the last decade, but none of the ones in California have given enough information about their jobs that I can say they’re the guy I’m talking about here. Back in 2011 and 2012, Chang did give to Mark Warner, Jeff Merkley, and Jim Costa, all Democrats, and his record over the previous decade was very solidly blue, but that was a lot of years ago, and we can’t say for sure what he believes today.

William Chang’s wife is named Diana, and Kristina Chang is definitely his daughter (I am reasonably confident that Kelly Chang Levine is as well). He is a member of the Board of Ensysce Biosciences, Inc, and is a former board member of the Boards of the Asia Foundation and of the San Francisco Port and Social Services Commissions. He is also a partner in Digikey Investment Holdings, and it’s not super easy to track down any information on whatever they do.

And unlike a lot of the people who I’ve profiled in this series, William Chang does not give a lot of interviews. There was one with Henry Schulman about the Million Dollar Arm, but otherwise, all we have is what’s filtered down to us through others. Does that give a complete picture of William Chang? No, but sometimes that’s all you get.