Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, is now reportedly the richest person in China with a net worth of about $57.5 billion (RM254.87 billion). He overtook Tencent co-founder Ma Huateng and bottled water tycoon Zhong Shanshan.
According to a Bloomberg report, Zhang’s wealth reportedly rose by more than $10 billion recently. Zhang, who lives in Singapore, owns 21 per cent of ByteDance. He started the company in a small apartment in Beijing in 2012, aiming to create smart, AI-powered platforms.
The company now owns a suite of apps including TikTok, Douyin, and the news app Toutiao. Despite US threats to ban TikTok, the app still has more than 1 billion users globally.
He reportedly told his employees that he’s “not very social, preferring solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music, and contemplating what may be possible” and that he lacked “some of the skills that make an ideal manager,” preferring a non-managerial role, according to a 2021 news report.
Zhang Yiming, whose name is based on a Chinese proverb about “surprising everyone with a first attempt,” was born in 1983 in China’s Fujian province, with his parents having worked as civil servants.
He graduated from Nankai University in 2005, where he initially studied microelectronics before switching to software engineering, according to a South China Morning Post report. He also married his college sweetheart.
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