41-year-old Zhang Yiming now owns a wealth of $57.5 billion, making him third richest person in Asia and 24th richest person in world
BEIJING: (UrduPoint/Pakistan Point News-March 27th, 2025) Zhang Yiming, the owner of ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, has become the richest person in China, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
This is the first time that the founder of TikTok surpassed China's traditional billionaires.
41-year-old Zhang Yiming now owns a wealth of $57.5 billion, making him the third richest person in Asia and the 24th richest person in the world. His wealth increased by $13.6 billion just this year. He surpassed Zhong Shanshan, the owner of Nongfu Spring, and Pony Ma Huateng, the co-founder of Tencent.
Interestingly, despite being the founder of a popular platform like TikTok, Zhang Yiming prefers to lead a low-profile life. Born in Fujian province, China, Zhang's parents were government employees, and he graduated in software engineering from Nanjing University.
Zhang Yiming started his career at a startup called Kuxun, where he quickly became a team leader. Later, he also worked at microsoft but left his job to start his own company. In 2012, he founded ByteDance, which has now gained worldwide popularity thanks to TikTok.
Zhang Yiming admitted that initially, he didn't use TikTok because he thought it was a platform for young people. However, later it became mandatory for company employees to create videos and get likes, which led him to start using the app himself.
The popularity of ByteDance and TikTok continues to rise, and Zhang Yiming is considered one of the most influential technology entrepreneurs in the world.
