Zhang Yiming surpassed Mukesh Ambani to become Asia’s second-richest person after a rise in ByteDance Ltd.’s valuation and further progress in the Chinese firm’s AI ambitions.
Zhang’s net worth climbed to $92.8 billion, cementing his position as China’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The ByteDance co-founder’s fortune swelled more than sevenfold since Bloomberg started tracking his wealth in March 2019, when he was worth $13 billion.
The surge comes amid the success of ByteDance’s video app TikTok, as well as its Doubao AI chatbot, which has amassed more than 300 million monthly users to become China’s most popular. ByteDance also earlier 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, Shanghai-based analyst at Capital Securities. “The developments in the US are unlikely to have a major negative impact.”
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index applied a 25% risk discount to ByteDance’s valuation after the US House of Representatives passed a bill in March 2024 to ban TikTok’s operation in the country unless its Chinese owner sells the app.
That discount was lowered to 10% 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.
Zhang’s wealth jumped by more than $24 billion after Bloomberg analyzed valuations from investors BlackRock Inc., Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and those given by HSG and General Atlantic last month. ByteDance didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meantime, Ambani dropped to the third-richest in Asia, the Bloomberg index showed, with a net worth of $86.9 billion. Gautam Adani retained the region’s top spot at $117.4 billion.
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 firm 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 Corp., 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.
Now the Beijing-based social media leader is betting heavily on artificial intelligence. It’s discussing expenditures of as much as $70 billion this year in a bid to lead the Chinese AI market and challenge the top US players abroad, Bloomberg News reported last month. Much of that investment is expected to be funded by the roughly $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.”
Source: Bloomberg News
--Agencies
