TikTok founder becomes Asia's richest person after amassing $105.5b in 7 years

TikTok is among the social media apps shown in this file photo. [AFP]

Zhang Yiming, 43, the founder of TikTok parent company ByteDance, has become Asia's richest person for the first time, with a net worth of $105.5 billion.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Wednesday (local time), Zhang's $105.5 billion fortune ranks 18th in the world. Gautam Adani, chairman of India's Adani Group, who previously held the top spot among Asian billionaires, had a net worth of $104.8 billion.

The gap between Zhang and Adani stands at $700 million. Because ByteDance is privately held, a change in its valuation method could reverse the rankings. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index applies a 10 percent risk discount when valuing unlisted companies.

Zhang's net worth has grown more than eightfold from $13 billion when Bloomberg began tracking it in March 2019. His wealth has risen by $40.3 billion so far in 2026, including more than $12 billion in September alone — reflecting ByteDance valuations by investment firms including BlackRock, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price.

The surge was driven largely by ByteDance's agreement in January to establish a US joint venture with Oracle and Silver Lake, which resolved more than three years of uncertainty over TikTok's potential removal from the American market.

ByteDance's AI business has also boosted its valuation. The company has launched the Doubao chatbot and the Jianying video-generation tool.

ByteDance's sales in the first half of 2026 reached approximately $120 billion, up 30 percent from the same period in 2025. Overseas sales accounted for more than 30 percent of the total, a record high. Net profit for the period came in at around $20 billion, slipping slightly from the first half of 2025 as expanded AI investment weighed on earnings.

Among the top five wealthiest people in Asia, Zhang is the only one who built his fortune on internet platforms and AI.

Zhang founded ByteDance in 2012. He launched the short-form video app Douyin in China in 2016, then introduced TikTok — the international version of Douyin — in 2017.

Riano Jie Su, a senior analyst at AI research firm Omdia, told Bloomberg that ByteDance had been focused on AI investment, adding that the company "made good use of the situation."

The top three on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index are Tesla CEO Elon Musk ($892 billion), Google co-founder Larry Page ($295 billion) and Google co-founder Sergey Brin ($274 billion).

dbsdn1110@heraldcorp.com