TikTok founder becomes China’s richest person. Who is Zhang Yiming? All you need to know

Zhang Yiming, who founded TikTok's parent company ByteDance Ltd., is now China's richest person according to Bloomberg.

The ByteDance founder topped Bloomberg's list on Wednesday, with a $57.5 billion fortune. He surpassed bottled water tycoon Zhong Shanshan and Tencent Holdings co-founder Ma Huateng to secure the first rank.

Zhang Yiming ranks after Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani

According to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index, Zhang Yiming now ranks as Asia’s third richest person after Reliance chairperson Mukesh Ambani and Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani.

Mukesh Ambani is Asia's richest man with a net worth of $90.9 billion, while Gautam Adani comes next with a net worth of $72.3 billion.

As per the Bloomberg report, the TikTok founder's wealth has jumped by $10 billion after it analysed the “the valuations from investors BlackRock Inc., Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and the company’s plans to buy back employee stock at a valuation of $312 billion.”

Who is Zhang Yiming?

Zhan Yiming has made a tremendous comeback after his flagship app faced blocking threats from the United States in recent times.

The 41-year-old founded ByteDance in 2012 in a four-bedroom Beijing apartment and developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform TikTok. The app became a disruptor in the internet space and shot Zhang to the ranks of the wealthiest persons in the world.

Zhang stepped down as the CEO of ByteDance in 2021 but according to Reuters, he still maintains over 50 per cent of ByteDance's voting rights.

Born in 1983 in in Longyan, Fujian, China, Zhang was the only child of his civil servant parents.

He majored in micro electronics engineering and software engineering from the Nankai University in Tianjin.

Before founding ByteDance in 2012, Zhang worked at Microsoft for a short while but left the job due to strict corporate rules.

He launched ByteDance's video sharing app TikTok in 2015. The app was an instant hit among millennials globally and became popular worldwide.

Since late 2018, ByteDance boasts of more than a billion monthly users across its mobile apps.

Forbes named Zhang in its 2013 China 30 Under 30 list. Following that, he featured in Fortune magazine's 40 Under 40 list in 2018 and Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2019.

Forbes pegs Zhang Yiming's real time net worth at $65.5 billion.