Zhang Yiming
Top 2 in Top 8 Richest Chinese Billionaires
Zhang Yiming is the founder and CEO of Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., one of China's leading internet technology conglomerates that is rapidly overtaking other online content platforms with its unparalleled ability to attract younger social media users. Toutiao, a major content platform in China, and TikTok, a video-based social networking app popular with Gen-Z, are among the applications in ByteDance's portfolio. ByteDance, founded in 2012, is valued at $75 billion and has about 1 billion monthly users worldwide – it is regarded by some as the world's most valuable start-up.
Yiming studied microelectronics and software engineering at Nankai University before starting his career at the travel website Kuxun, which was ultimately bought by Tripadvisor. After a brief spell at Microsoft, Yiming began developing his own apps and launched various businesses, including a real estate search service. In order to compete with Baidu's delivery of news interwoven with advertising, Yiming eventually concentrated his efforts on news aggregation applications in 2012.
Net worth: $50 billion
