TikTok's Founder Has Become Asia's Richest Person
- 16.09.2026, 19:13
His net worth exceeded $105 billion.
Zhang Yiming , founder of ByteDance , the company that owns TikTok, has become Asia’s richest person for the first time. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth has exceeded $105 billion. He has surpassed Indian businessman Gautam Adani. Zhang’s significant wealth growth is attributed to the development of artificial intelligence at ByteDance.
In September alone, 43-year-old Zhang Yiming increased his net worth by more than $12 billion. This came after the latest valuations of ByteDance, published by investment firms BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, and T. Rowe Price, were analyzed.
Since March 2019, when Bloomberg began tracking Zhang’s net worth, it has grown approximately eightfold—from $13 billion to more than $105 billion.
ByteDance’s growth is no longer driven solely by TikTok but also by the development of artificial intelligence-based products. These include the Doubao chatbot and the Seedance video generator.
Lian Jay Su , chief analyst at the research firm Omdia , noted that Zhang Yiming has consistently stuck to his chosen course and continued to increase investment in artificial intelligence. According to him, ByteDance can use the large volume of data from its social platforms to train AI models. At the same time, one of the main risks for the company remains the high level of competition in the Chinese market.
The previous record-holder, Gautam Adani, took the top spot on the list of Asia’s richest people in June, when his fortune reached $120 billion. However, in recent months, his fortune has shrunk following a decline in the stock prices of companies within his conglomerate. Their stock prices were affected by the MSCI index rebalancing and a broader market sell-off amid rising oil prices and bond yields.
In estimating Zhang’s net worth, Bloomberg applies a 10 percent discount to the value of the privately held ByteDance. This is due to the risks posed by the company’s closed ownership structure.
Zhang’s growing fortune comes amid a significant redistribution of capital in China’s technology sector. The artificial intelligence boom is helping to create new billionaires, including among owners of companies that have not yet turned a profit.
In recent years, ByteDance has evolved from a company whose main global product was TikTok into one of the largest players in China’s artificial intelligence market. At the same time, the company faced prolonged challenges regarding TikTok’s operations in the U.S. In early 2026, the standoff ended with the transfer of part of TikTok’s U.S. operations to American investors.
Chinese authorities actively support the development of artificial intelligence as part of their technological competition with the United States. Beijing has rejected calls from American tech executives to slow down AI development and impose stricter restrictions on Chinese developers of such models.
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