In addition to Galaxy, the Lui family presides over a business empire that also includes the Hong Kong-listed property firm K Wah International Holdings and San Francisco-based Stanford Hotels.

FORBES: Casino Tycoon Gambles Big On Chinese Consumers

Blinkx's technology comes from U.K.-based enterprise-software vendor Autonomy (with which the company shares a San Francisco office).

FORBES: co-founder Sergey Brin

The San Francisco-based Twitter, created in 2006, currently has a handful of employees in the U.K. and Japan in addition to its more than 700 U.S. employees.

WSJ: Twitter Can Censor by Country