How ByteDance made Zhang a fortune
Zhang Yiming built his fortune by betting that recommendation algorithms, rather than human editors or social connections, would decide what people see on their phones. He founded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012, and its first major product was Toutiao, a news app that learned from each user's behavior and served a personalized feed of articles. Toutiao grew quickly in China at a time when smartphones were spreading rapidly.
The same technology was applied to short videos. ByteDance launched Douyin in China in 2016, and the following year it introduced an international version called TikTok. In 2017 the company acquired Musical.ly, a lip syncing app popular with teenagers in the United States and Europe, and in 2018 merged it into TikTok. The result became one of the most downloaded apps in the world and a major platform for entertainment, music and advertising.
ByteDance has remained private, raising money from investors at rising valuations. Its revenue comes largely from advertising, live streaming and ecommerce on Douyin, with TikTok contributing an increasing share. Zhang holds a large stake in ByteDance, and the value of that holding is the basis of his wealth.
ByteDance products and ownership
ByteDance's main businesses include:
- Douyin: the Chinese short video app, which also includes a large ecommerce and live streaming business
- TikTok: the international short video platform operated outside mainland China
- Toutiao: the news and information app that launched the company
- Lark (Feishu): workplace collaboration software
- Artificial intelligence products: including the Doubao chatbot and related models
Investors in ByteDance have included large international funds alongside its founders and employees. Zhang's shareholding comes with enhanced voting rights, giving him significant control over the company even as other shareholders hold much of the economic interest.
TikTok's global reach has drawn government scrutiny. India banned the app in 2020, and in the United States a law passed in 2024 required ByteDance to sell TikTok's American operations or face a ban. The handling of TikTok's US business led to extended negotiations between the company, investors and governments. ByteDance has continued to grow its Chinese businesses and has invested heavily in artificial intelligence.
Early life and first ventures
Zhang Yiming was born in 1983 in Longyan, in Fujian province in southeastern China. His parents were civil servants. He studied at Nankai University in Tianjin, first microelectronics and then software engineering, and graduated in 2005.
After university he joined Kuxun, a travel search startup, as an early engineer and rose to lead its technical team. He briefly worked at Microsoft in China but found the corporate environment did not suit him, and then joined Fanfou, an early Chinese microblogging service, which was shut down in 2009. That same year he started 99fang, a property search site, which gave him his first experience as a founder.
The experience of building search and recommendation systems convinced him that information should come to users automatically rather than through searches. He left 99fang and started ByteDance in a small apartment in Beijing in 2012, eventually raising money from investors after many early rejections. He served as chief executive until 2021, when he announced that he would step down and hand the role to his co founder Liang Rubo, saying he wanted to focus on long term strategy and learning. He has since lived largely in Singapore.
Public profile and giving
Zhang is known for keeping a low public profile. He has given relatively few interviews and in the early years of ByteDance wrote internal letters to staff about the company's culture, emphasizing speed, candor and a global outlook. He was known for his interest in management books and his preference for flat organizational structures, using ByteDance's own collaboration tools to run the company.
Since stepping down as chief executive, he has withdrawn even further from public view. He has not taken a prominent role in Chinese public life and has generally avoided comment on the regulatory and political debates around TikTok.
On philanthropy, Zhang made a large donation in 2021 to establish an education fund in his hometown of Longyan, aimed at supporting local education. ByteDance as a company has funded programs in areas such as rural education and disaster relief in China. His personal giving has been less publicized than that of some other technology founders, and most of his public activity remains tied to ByteDance itself.