TikTok founder Zhang Yiming overtakes Gautam Adani to become Asia's richest person; check top 5 richest Asians

Zhang Yiming's rise represents an eightfold increase from the $13 billion recorded in March 2019, when Bloomberg first began tracking his wealth.

Zhang Yiming, ByteDance Ltd founder, has become Asia’s richest person for the first time, as fortunes tied to artificial intelligence surge past the wealth of traditional industry billionaires. He has eclipsed the wealth of Indian tycoon Gautam Adani, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

At 43, Zhang is now worth more than $105 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His rise represents an eightfold increase from the $13 billion recorded in March 2019, when Bloomberg first began tracking his wealth.

The milestone marks a major comeback for the TikTok developer after navigating a protracted regulatory standoff that nearly shut down the social media platform in the United States.

Zhang, who was already China’s wealthiest individual, now leads the regional wealth rankings on the back of TikTok’s global reach and ByteDance’s rapid expansion into artificial intelligence.

His ascent illustrates how fortunes created by the ongoing AI boom are overtaking established wealth across traditional sectors in Asia, including:

ByteDance’s trajectory reflects how the company has moved past the geopolitical friction that required it to transfer parts of its US operations to American investors earlier this year.

Zhang’s focus on artificial intelligence has produced significant momentum, highlighted by the popular Doubao AI chatbot and the Seedance video-generation model.

“He plays his cards right,” Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at research firm Omdia, told Bloomberg. “He stayed on course and then continued to double down on AI investment.”

Su said that Zhang made a well-placed bet on developing ByteDance’s AI technology even as the US Congress aggressively questioned TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew in 2023. ByteDance can also, in theory, capitalize on its vast trove of social media data to train proprietary AI models, said Su.

While AI-related products and services represent ByteDance’s single largest opportunity following the success of its short-video platform, Su pointed out that fierce domestic competition within China remains its biggest risk.

Zhang’s net worth jumped by more than $12 billion this month alone after Bloomberg reviewed the latest valuations reported by global investment firms, including BlackRock Inc, Fidelity Investments, and T Rowe Price Group Inc.

To account for the private nature of the company, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index applies a 10% risk discount to the closely held ByteDance’s valuation.

The AI boom has minted a new class of billionaires across China, including founders whose companies have yet to turn a profit, as well as fortunes emerging from unlikely corners of the manufacturing sector.

According to the publication, this surge comes as China actively drives domestic AI development amid its broader competition with the US for global technological leadership. The report added that Beijing recently pushed back against calls from leading US tech executives to slow AI development and implement tighter restrictions on Chinese AI model builders.

(With inputs from Bloomberg)