Who is Zhang Yiming? TikTok founder becomes Asia's second-richest person

A 43-year-old Chinese entrepreneur has just become Asia's second-richest person. Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, has seen his fortune soar as investors place high bets on digital platforms, artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies. Zhang Yiming is a Chinese entrepreneur and software engineer who founded ByteDance in 2012. He was born in Fujian Province of China and studied software engineering before beginning a career in technology. He founded the company in Beijing and while it initially focused on content recommendation technology, it later launched a news aggregation platform that used AI to personalise content for users. Over the years, the company expanded into video-sharing platforms, social media applications, education technology, gaming, enterprise software and more. Today, Bytedance is best known for TikTok, Douyin, Toutiao, CapCut and other AI-driven services. While TikTok continues to perform strongly worldwide as a leading short-video platform, ByteDance's AI chatbot Doubao has become the most popular AI chatbot in China, attracting more than 300 million monthly users, as per Bloomberg. Moreover, the company is all set to spend a whopping $70 billion this year in China's AI industry and compete with leading American tech giants globally. Zhang's net worth climbed to $92.8 billion, cementing his position as China's richest person, as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His fortune swelled more than sevenfold since March 2019, when he was worth $13 billion. Zhang's fortune is driven by software, algorithms, social media and emerging AI technologies. Japan's Tadashi Yanai and Masayoshi Son also form the top five, with net worth of $72.5 billion and $72.0 billion, respectively.