TikTok and ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has become China’s richest person for the first time. Zhang achieved this with a personal wealth estimated at $57.5 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He now ranks first among Chinese billionaires.
The new development now means Zhang Yiming has surpassed Zhong Shanshan, founder of the bottled water company Nongfu Spring, and Ma Huateng, co-founder of Tencent Holdings, to become China’s number one wealthy individual.
According to an evaluation by investors such as BlackRock, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, and an analysis of ByteDance’s employee stock buyback plan, the corporate value of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, was reassessed at $36.5 billion. This reassessment led to an increase of over $10 billion in Zhang Yiming’s assets.
The Chinese-based TikTok owner holds a 21 per cent equity stake in ByteDance, which has over 1 billion users. Zhang Yiming is currently ranked third among Asian billionaires, following Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries in India, and Gautam Adani, chairman of the Adani Group in India.
See Also: Data breach investigation: ‘We look forward to cooperating with NDPC’ – TikTok.
Despite a legal battle over its U.S. assets in March 2024, ByteDance’s global revenue increased by 30 per cent last year to $110 billion. This was instrumental in propelling Zhang’s fortune to $49.3 billion in November 2024.
The new milestone has been attributed to external market influence as China’s economy faced difficulties with the real estate crisis and a volatile stock market since the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s policymakers are now expected to unveil major stimulus measures to encourage consumption and spending, which has drastically declined in recent months.
Who is Zhang Yiming?
Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance in August 2012 following the struggles of Chinese smartphone users to find information in mobile apps. His vision was to push relevant content to users using AI-generated recommendations.
Within two years of its launch, ByteDance attracted more than 13 million daily users. After an initial rejection, Sequoia Capital led a US$100 million investment in the company in 2014.
Zhang Yiming focused on expanding ByteDance globally, as opposed to other Chinese tech CEOs who focused on the domestic growth of their companies. In September 2015, ByteDance launched its video-sharing app TikTok with little fanfare. The product was an instant hit with millennials and became popular worldwide.
At that time, ByteDance was valued at US$75 billion and surpassed Uber as the world’s most valuable privately held startup. Zhang will later step down as the CEO in March 2012 after he announced Liang Rubo as his successor.
TikTok future in the US is still uncertain
Amid the new feat of Zhang Yiming, TikTok’s future in the United States is still dark.
For months now, TikTok has been caught in a dilemma over the “sell or ban” law. This follows years of allegations from the U.S. government that TikTok’s ties to China pose a national security risk and that it exposes Americans’ sensitive information to the Chinese government. The move mandates ByteDance to divest its U.S. operations to another owner.
Coming as a temporary rescue on January 20, the United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order that delays TikTok’s ban enforcement action for 75 days. The order, which was aimed at restoring TikTok’s service in the country, comes a day after the video content platform restored services in the U.S. after shutting down due to a “sell or ban” law.
As the countdown looms on its future, the social media platform is yet to reach a resolution on a buyer. American companies like Oracle, Microsoft, and Perplexity AI are rumored to have an interest in buying TikTok, but ByteDance has not indicated that it plans to sell.
On the positive side, Americans’ support for the ban is declining. According to a study from the Pew Research Center in a survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults, it found that just 34 per cent of respondents supported banning the short-form video app. When Pew ran a similar study in 2023, 50 per cent of adults supported the TikTok ban.
Over the same period, the study also shows more Americans growing opposed to the ban. While 22 per cent of respondents opposed it in 2023, that population rose to 32 per cent in the recent study.
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