Zhang Yiming, who was born on 1 April 1983, is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He established ByteDance in 2012 and created both the news aggregation service Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin (which is known around the world as TikTok). Zhang is one of the wealthiest people in the world and, according to Bloomberg, had a net worth of US$92.8 billion as of June 2026.
On 4 November 2021 he resigned as CEO of ByteDance, thereby completing the leadership transition that had been announced in May 2021. As Reuters reports, Zhang still holds more than 50 per cent of the voting rights at ByteDance. It was because of the rapid global rise in popularity of TikTok that Zhang became the richest man in China in 2024. Profile Summary CategoryInformation Full NameZhang Yiming Born1 April 1983 (age 43) BirthplaceLongyan Area, Fujian, China EducationNankai University — BEng OccupationsInternet Entrepreneur; Philanthropist Years Active2006–Present Known ForFounding and leading ByteDance; creating Douyin/TikTok TitleFounder & Chairman of ByteDance Age Zhang was born in the Longyan Area of Fujian, China on 1 April 1983 (making him 43 years old).
Biography and career Zhang was born in Longyan, Fujian, China on 1 April 1983 and his parents were civil servants; he had only one brother. In 2001 he went to Nankai University in Tianjin, studying micro electronics engineering and software engineering. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering in 2005. He met his wife while he was at university. In February 2006 Zhang became the fifth employee and the first engineer at the travel website Kuxun; he was promoted to technical director one year later.
In 2008 Zhang left Kuxun to join Microsoft, but became frustrated with the company’s rules and soon afterwards left Microsoft to take up a position at the startup Fanfou, a company which in the end failed. When Expedia was about to acquire Kuxun in 2009, Zhang took over the real estate search business of Kuxun and founded 99fang.com, which was his first company; he then left the business three years later.
ByteDance Zhang believed that at the time Chinese users of smartphones were having difficulty in finding information within the mobile apps available in 2012, since the search company Baidu was mixing its search results with undisclosed advertisements. His idea was to send users relevant content by means of recommendations produced by artificial intelligence. However, this idea was not something that most venture capitalists shared, and he was unable to obtain funding until Susquehanna International Group decided to invest in the startup.
In March 2012 he and Liang Rubo founded ByteDance in a four-bedroom apartment, and in August of that year ByteDance launched the Toutiao news app, gaining more than 13 million daily users within two years. Sequoia Capital, which had at first refused to invest, eventually changed its mind and led a US$100 million investment in the company in 2014. While other Chinese technology CEOs had concentrated on the domestic growth of their businesses, Zhang concentrated on expanding ByteDance worldwide.
He maintained that the workplace productivity app Lark should be aimed at the American, European and Japanese markets, rather than restricting its focus to China as had been initially proposed. The way that Zhang managed ByteDance was based on that of US technology companies such as Google and involved holding bi-monthly town hall meetings as well as discouraging his employees from addressing him as “boss” or “CEO”, which is the usual practice in China.
More… In September 2017 ByteDance launched its video-sharing app TikTok (which is known as Douyin in China) abroad and it was an immediate success among millennials, becoming popular all over the world. The company then purchased Musical.ly for $800 million in August 2018 and incorporated it into TikTok. In 2018 the National Radio and Television Administration closed down ByteDance’s first app, Neihan Duanzi.
In reply, Zhang issued an apology, stating that the app was “incommensurate with socialist core values” and had a “weak” application of Xi Jinping Thought, and committed to ByteDance将进一步 deepen its cooperation with the ruling Chinese Communist Party in order to promote its policies more effectively. ByteDance had a value of US$75 billion by the end of 2018, given that its mobile apps had more than a billion monthly users, and it thereby became the most valuable privately held startup in the world, overtaking Uber.
In a legal document in September 2020 the United States Department of Justice referred to Zhang as a ‘mouthpiece’ of the Chinese Communist Party. Zhang stated that he would resign as CEO and would be replaced by Liang Rubo in May 2021. In May 2023, The New York Times stated that a former employee had sued Zhang and claimed that he had helped pay bribes to Lu Wei. Honors and recognition Forbes featured Zhang in its 2013 China 30 Under 30 list; in 2018 he was placed on Fortune magazine’s 40 Under 40 list and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2019.
In September 2026 Fortune stated that Zhang had become the richest person in Asia, surpassing the Indian businessperson Gautam Adani, with a net worth of $105.5 billion. Net Worth Zhang Yiming’s wealth is about $105.5 billion, which makes him the wealthiest person in Asia.
