ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has become Asia’s richest person for the first time, overtaking Indian billionaire Gautam Adani as his fortune crossed $105 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His fortune has increased more than eightfold from $13 billion in March 2019, when Bloomberg began tracking his wealth, boosted by the higher valuation of ByteDance and growing investor interest in its AI products, including Doubao and Seedance.
The latest rankings have placed Zhang ahead of Adani on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, highlighting the growing influence of AI and consumer platforms on Asian billionaire fortunes and wealth rankings.
Zhang’s wealth is closely tied to TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, which has, over time, emerged as one of the world’s biggest social media platforms.
The company has also expanded rapidly in the field of artificial intelligence, with products like the Doubao chatbot and the Seedance video-generation tool.
Zhang continued investing in AI even as TikTok faced intense scrutiny in the United States. Earlier this year, ByteDance transferred parts of TikTok’s US operations to American investors, easing uncertainty over the app’s future in the country.
Before taking over Asia’s top spot, Zhang was already China’s richest person, with his wealth driven by TikTok’s global reach and ByteDance’s expanding AI business.