Zhang is a co-founder of ByteDance, the social media group behind video-sharing app TikTok. The Beijing-based company also owns the news aggregation service Toutiao. ByteDance has more than 1 billion users worldwide and had revenue of more than $110 billion in 2023. Zhang stepped down as chief executive in May 2021.
Zhang's wealth is derived from his stake in ByteDance, the social media group behind video-sharing app TikTok. The Beijing-based company has more than 1 billion users, according to a Feb. 2, 2024 Bloomberg News report. It had revenue of more than $110 billion in 2023, according to a Dec. 21, 2023 Bloomberg News report.
Zhang is credited with about 20% of the company based on the TikTok CEO's prepared testimony in March 2023. A share buyback valued the company at $268 billion in December 2023, Bloomberg reported. The US House of Representatives passed a bill in March 2024 to ban TikTok in the US unless its Chinese owner sells the video-sharing app.
The calculation of Zhang's wealth was reduced by about $2 billion on March 15, 2024. This was due to an increase in the discount used here to 25% and reflects the latest information on the company's valuation. ByteDance had been valued at about $220 billion in private trades in March 2023, according to a Bloomberg News report.
A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment on Zhang's net worth.
Zhang Yiming was born in 1983 in Fujian province of China. He grew up in the southeastern city of Longyan, the only son of civil servants, according to a Bloomberg News report in 2017.
He studied software engineering in Nankai University in Tianjian. Graduating in 2005, he started his career as an engineer at the tourism search website, Kuxun.com. In 2009, Zhang started his first business, a property search site called 99fang.com. He quit the business three years later.
In 2012, Zhang co-founded ByteDance, a Beijing-based business that provides news aggregation services. The company is said to have had revenue of about 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) in 2018. It reported a revenue of $17 billion in 2019. Bloomberg reported ByteDance's valuation exceeds $100 billion in private markets in May 2020 and the company is seeking another $2 billion funding raising round at a $180 billion valuation in November 2020.