Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok parent company ByteDance, has just overtaken Indian tycoon Gautam Adani as the richest person in Asia, according to Bloomberg, who currently boasts a net worth of $104.8 billion.
Despite regulatory hurdles that nearly shut down one of his most popular apps in the U.S., TikTok, Zhang’s fortune has swelled to a whopping $105.5 billion.
Zhang, who owns around 21% of his company, saw his net worth skyrocket $12 billion this month alone following new valuations from BlackRock and Fidelity.
Now, his riches are nearly eight times greater than the $13 billion he had to his name in 2019—when Bloomberg first began monitoring his net worth. And AI has been one of the biggest wealth drivers.
How AI helped TikTok’s founder become even richer: ‘He plays his cards right’
The Chinese billionaire won out on the AI boom by taking big swings at the right time.
Zhang developed ByteDance’s AI technology in the midst of the U.S.-TikTok standoff; and Bloomberg reporting said that the company can leverage data from its social media apps to train its AI models. These advanced tech products may be the business’ biggest growth engines aside from the success of its video platform, boasting over a billion of daily active TikTok users, and hundreds of millions of people on Douyin.
“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.”
Zhang’s rise is one of many examples of how AI is reshaping the billionaire ranks—creating new fortunes, and rapidly growing the wealth of some of the world’s richest people.
AI is minting new billionaires and sending net worths soaring
The world’s richest entrepreneurs have watched their net worths skyrocket and plummet at the whim of the stock market. And just like Zhang, Michael Dell—the founder and CEO of pioneering tech company Dell Technologies—nearly doubled his wealth in just one year thanks to the AI boom. Now, he’s the fifth richest man in the world.
TikTok founder is now the richest person in all of Asia
Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok parent company ByteDance, has just overtaken Indian tycoon Gautam Adani as the richest person in Asia, according to Bloomberg, who currently boasts a net worth of $104.8 billion.
Despite regulatory hurdles that nearly shut down one of his most popular apps in the U.S., TikTok, Zhang’s fortune has swelled to a whopping $105.5 billion.
Zhang, who owns around 21% of his company, saw his net worth skyrocket $12 billion this month alone following new valuations from BlackRock and Fidelity.
Now, his riches are nearly eight times greater than the $13 billion he had to his name in 2019—when Bloomberg first began monitoring his net worth. And AI has been one of the biggest wealth drivers.
How AI helped TikTok’s founder become even richer: ‘He plays his cards right’
The Chinese billionaire won out on the AI boom by taking big swings at the right time.
Zhang developed ByteDance’s AI technology in the midst of the U.S.-TikTok standoff; and Bloomberg reporting said that the company can leverage data from its social media apps to train its AI models. These advanced tech products may be the business’ biggest growth engines aside from the success of its video platform, boasting over a billion of daily active TikTok users, and hundreds of millions of people on Douyin.
“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.”
Zhang’s rise is one of many examples of how AI is reshaping the billionaire ranks—creating new fortunes, and rapidly growing the wealth of some of the world’s richest people.
AI is minting new billionaires and sending net worths soaring
The world’s richest entrepreneurs have watched their net worths skyrocket and plummet at the whim of the stock market. And just like Zhang, Michael Dell—the founder and CEO of pioneering tech company Dell Technologies—nearly doubled his wealth in just one year thanks to the AI boom. Now, he’s the fifth richest man in the world.