Zhang Yiming passed Mukesh Ambani to become Asia’s second-richest person after an increase in ByteDance's valuation and further progress in the Chinese company's AI ambitions.
Mr Zhang’s net worth climbed to $92.8 billion, cementing his position as China’s richest person, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed. The ByteDance co-founder’s fortune has swelled more than sevenfold since Bloomberg started tracking his wealth in March 2019, when he was worth $13 billion.
Mr Ambani dropped to the third-richest in Asia, the index showed, with a net worth of $86.9 billion. Gautam Adani retained the region’s top spot at $117.4 billion.
Mr Zhang’s rise is fuelled by the success of ByteDance’s app TikTok, as well as its Doubao, which has amassed more than 300 million monthly users to become the most popular AI chatbot in China. ByteDance this year transferred parts of its US business to American investors.
“The jump in valuation reflects the company’s strong fundamentals and the success of its apps such as Doubao in China,” said Amy Lin, an analyst in Shanghai who works for Capital Securities. “The developments in the US are unlikely to have a major negative impact.”
Mr Zhang first became China’s richest person last year. He was later overtaken and reclaimed the title earlier this year.
The Bloomberg index applied a 25-per-cent risk discount to ByteDance’s valuation after the US House of Representatives passed a bill in March 2024 to ban TikTok’s operations in the country unless its Chinese owner sold the app. That discount was lowered to 10 per cent on June 2 to reflect the completion of the US sale, as well as the first post-spinoff valuations given by institutional investors in regulatory filings published in late May.
Mr Zhang’s wealth increased by more than $24 billion after Bloomberg analysed valuations from investors BlackRock, Fidelity Investments and T Rowe Price Group, and those given last month by HSG and General Atlantic. ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
ByteDance is China’s highest-profile private company. Its success with Doubao has led it to prepare to charge subscription fees, rare in a country where users have been unwilling to pay for online services. The company has long been considered a prime candidate for an eventual initial public offering.
The company’s profile remained intact even after TikTok’s US operations were transferred to a consortium led by Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment company MGX. That ended years of political and regulatory uncertainty over what critics said were potential national security vulnerabilities.
The Beijing-based social media leader is betting heavily on AI. It is discussing expenditures of up to $70 billion this year in a bid to lead the Chinese AI market and challenge the main US players abroad, Bloomberg News reported last month. Much of that investment is expected to be funded by about $50 billion in profit it earned in 2025.
“Removing the US overhang unlocked the re-rating of the remaining ByteDance entity,” said Ke Yan, a Singapore-based tech analyst with DZT Research. “Even with the re-rating, the valuation still looks cheap on fundamentals.”
