Highlights:
- Zhang Yiming’s fortune reached about $105 billion
- He moved ahead of Gautam Adani
- His wealth has risen eightfold since 2019
- ByteDance’s AI business is driving the latest valuation
- Zhang founded TikTok parent ByteDance in 2012
ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has reached a new milestone in the global wealth race, becoming Asia’s richest person with a fortune of about $105 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The 43-year-old Chinese technology entrepreneur moved ahead of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, whose estimated fortune was also around $105 billion at the latest index reading on September 16, 2026. The narrow difference means the ranking can change as billionaire wealth estimates are updated.
Zhang’s rise is notable not only for the size of his fortune but also for how quickly it has grown. Bloomberg began tracking his wealth at about $13 billion in March 2019. In roughly seven years, his estimated fortune has therefore increased more than eightfold.
His wealth is closely connected to ByteDance, the privately held technology company he founded and the parent of TikTok. But the latest increase is increasingly tied to the company's expansion in artificial intelligence, including its Doubao chatbot and Seedance video-generation technology.
From ByteDance founder to Asia’s wealthiest
Zhang founded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012 and built the company around technology designed to recommend content to users. That strategy eventually helped produce TikTok, one of the world's most influential short-video platforms.
He stepped down as ByteDance's chief executive in November 2021 after announcing the transition earlier that year. Although he no longer runs the company operationally, his fortune remains heavily linked to its valuation.
ByteDance's growth has extended beyond social media. The company has invested aggressively in artificial intelligence, with products such as Doubao, its AI chatbot, and Seedance, a video-generation tool.
Bloomberg's latest assessment indicates that this AI expansion has become an important factor in the valuation of Zhang's stake.
The timing is significant. AI has become one of the most closely watched areas of the technology industry, with investors placing substantial valuations on companies developing foundation models, chatbots, video-generation systems and other AI applications.
For Zhang, that shift has created another source of potential value beyond TikTok's enormous global audience.
How Zhang passed Adani
Zhang's estimated fortune and Adani's were both around $105 billion in the latest Bloomberg reading, but Zhang moved into the top Asian position.
Adani built his wealth through the diversified Adani Group, whose businesses span areas including infrastructure, energy, logistics and other industries. His position near the top of India's wealth rankings has made him a major figure in Asia's billionaire landscape.
Zhang's rise illustrates a different route to enormous wealth: technology platforms combined with rapid expansion into artificial intelligence.
The latest Bloomberg global ranking placed Zhang at No. 18 among the world's richest people, with Adani at No. 20. Thomas Peterffy was positioned between them at about $105 billion.
At the very top of the global list was Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk, whose estimated fortune was about $892 billion. Larry Page, Jeff Bezos and Sergey Brin followed, according to the index.
Zhang's position is particularly striking because of his age. At 43, he is considerably younger than most people in the global top 20. Warren Buffett, for example, was listed at 96.
His rise also reflects how quickly technology fortunes can change when private-company valuations move sharply.
Why the $105 billion figure can change
There is an important caveat behind Zhang's ranking: ByteDance is privately held.
Unlike a publicly traded company, ByteDance does not have a continuously updated stock-market price that investors can use to calculate the value of Zhang's holdings minute by minute.
Bloomberg instead estimates the value of his wealth using available information about the company's valuation, including marks from major investors. As a result, Zhang's $105 billion fortune is an estimate rather than a directly observable market value.
That also explains why billionaire rankings from different organizations can sometimes differ substantially.
The value of ByteDance has been particularly complicated by TikTok's regulatory and political challenges in the United States. Those concerns were eased in 2026 after ByteDance agreed to a U.S. joint venture involving Oracle and Silver Lake, according to Bloomberg's account.
The arrangement removed the immediate threat of a forced shutdown of TikTok in the United States and reduced one source of uncertainty surrounding ByteDance's business.
Meanwhile, the company's AI expansion has become increasingly important to its overall valuation. Bloomberg said Doubao had surpassed 300 million monthly users and was China's most popular chatbot, further highlighting the scale of ByteDance's AI ambitions.
For Zhang, the journey from a $13 billion estimated fortune in 2019 to roughly $105 billion today represents one of the fastest transformations among Asia's technology billionaires.
His ascent also captures a broader shift in where extreme wealth is being created. Traditional industries continue to dominate many billionaire fortunes, but technology platforms and artificial intelligence are creating fortunes on a scale that can rapidly alter the global rankings.
At $105 billion, Zhang now sits alongside the world's richest entrepreneurs — and, for the moment, just ahead of Adani in Asia's wealth race.
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