Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, has topped the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for the first time. According to Bloomberg, his fortune has reached $57.5 billion, an increase of $13.6 billion since the start of the year.
The top three richest people in China also include Ma Huateng, the founder of Tencent, which owns the WeChat messenger with 1.3 billion users ($56.6 billion), and Zhong Shanshan, the owner of a major drinking water supplier, with a fortune of $54.1 billion.
ByteDance’s Global Success
Zhang is now the third richest person in Asia, following Mukesh Ambani ($90.9 billion) and Gautam Adani ($72.3 billion) from India. His wealth is tied to ByteDance, where he holds a 21% stake. TikTok, one of its flagship products, has over 1 billion users, while its AI chatbot Doubao has more than 75 million active users.
Zhang stepped down as ByteDance’s CEO in 2021 and later resigned as chairman of the company’s board. Despite this, his influence on the company remains strong. “What sets Zhang apart from previous generations of ‘made in China’ billionaires is that his business is more innovative and globally oriented,” said Hao Gao, director of the Global Family Business Research Center at Tsinghua University.
Zhang himself has emphasized the uniqueness of ByteDance’s approach. “The most important thing is that we are not a news business,” he told the press in 2017. “We are more like a search engine or a social media platform. We are doing truly innovative work. We are not copying American companies, either in products or technology.”
Uncertainty Around TikTok’s U.S. Future
Despite ByteDance’s success, TikTok’s future in the U.S. remains unclear, notes NIXSOLUTIONS. A crucial deadline set by U.S. authorities is approaching on April 5, requiring TikTok to sell its U.S. assets to continue operating in the country. Oracle is one of the potential buyers, offering security guarantees while possibly allowing ByteDance to retain control over TikTok’s key algorithms, Bloomberg News reports.
We’ll keep you updated as more details emerge on this evolving situation.