Zhang Yiming has once again become the richest person in China
The latest Forbes rich list shows that Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of SoftBank Group, has a net worth of $100.4 billion (approximately 680.5 billion yuan), surpassing Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani and reclaiming the throne of Asia's richest man after more than a decade.
Right behind him, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, retained his title as China's richest man and reached the second-richest position in Asia for the first time, with a net worth of $92.8 billion (approximately 628.9 billion yuan). His wealth has more than tripled in seven years.
TikTok emerges from the shadow of the ban, with overseas e-commerce and advertising businesses growing at a high speed
According to Bloomberg, Zhang Yiming's significant increase in net worth this time is mainly due to the success of TikTok and Doubao.
The overseas business supported by TikTok has become a core growth point for ByteDance, but it has long been at risk of a U.S. ban.
In 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass a bill to force the divestiture of TikTok: if ByteDance does not divest its U.S. TikTok business, TikTok will be removed and banned across the United States.
Due to the uncertainty of geopolitical regulations, a 25% risk discount was set for ByteDance's overall valuation, which depressed Zhang Yiming's net worth.
This year, ByteDance completed the transfer of the equity of TikTok's U.S. entity, which is now controlled by a U.S. consortium composed of Oracle, Silver Lake, and UAE's MGX, removing the biggest uncertainty.
The market reduced ByteDance's risk discount from 25% to 10%. The 15% valuation difference caused Zhang Yiming's wealth to skyrocket by more than $24 billion (approximately 162.67 billion yuan).
Currently, TikTok has approximately 2 billion monthly active users globally, making it the fifth-largest social platform in the world. The average user usage time is about 95 - 98 minutes, the highest among all social platforms.
In 2025, ByteDance's overseas revenue increased by nearly 50%, and the proportion of overseas revenue reached more than 30%.
Among them, TikTok Shop, regarded as the overseas version of Douyin e-commerce, replicated the success experience in China. The number of active consumers has increased to 400 million, becoming the second major breakthrough for ByteDance's e-commerce business.
In the Southeast Asian market, TikTok Shop became the second in the industry in just four years, second only to Shopee. In the United States, TikTok Shop's GMV exceeded $500 million within four days during last year's "Black Friday and Cyber Monday".
In addition, in markets such as Europe, Latin America, and Japan, TikTok Shop's year-on-year growth rate is also very impressive.
As the core business, TikTok's advertising business still shows a steady growth trend.
Last year, TikTok's global advertising revenue was approximately $33.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 40.5%. With the resolution of the ban crisis this year, it may attract more brand merchants to settle in, and the advertising business revenue is expected to reach a new high.
The rapid development of these two overseas businesses has contributed to a further increase in the valuation of the parent company, ByteDance.
Doubao has over 300 million monthly active users, and ByteDance will invest $70 billion in AI construction this year
In the domestic market, after the growth of Douyin's main businesses such as advertising and e-commerce has gradually slowed down, Doubao has become one of the biggest highlights of ByteDance.
According to QuestMobile data, the number of active users of Doubao increased by 100 million in the first quarter of this year, reaching nearly 350 million, far ahead of the second place and ranking first in the domestic AI applications.
These 350 million monthly active users bring not only traffic but also a symbol of occupying the main entrance in the AI era.
Previously, ByteDance was long regarded as a content or advertising company. Doubao has transformed it into an AI technology company, which creates greater room for imagination for ByteDance's future development and has become an important fulcrum for high valuation.
In terms of the commercialization path, for C-end users, Doubao has officially announced that it will launch a paid service in late June, with annual fees ranging from 688 yuan to 5088 yuan, marking a strategic transformation from free traffic attraction to paid value-added services.
Doubao's large model technology also provides technical support for ByteDance's other businesses, improving the overall profitability.
In the B-end cloud service, Volcengine's MaaS business occupies nearly half of the Chinese market and ranks first. People familiar with the matter revealed that just one model, Seedance 2.0, can bring more than 1 billion yuan in monthly revenue to Volcengine.
Last year, the revenue of this business was approximately 1.5 billion yuan. In April this year, ByteDance has adjusted its revenue target for this year to 15 billion yuan, a tenfold increase.
Recently, ByteDance is internally discussing increasing its capital expenditure in 2026 to a maximum of $70 billion (approximately 474.4 billion yuan), all of which will be used for data center and AI infrastructure construction.
Conclusion
Zhang Yiming's skyrocketing net worth reflects the market's recognition of ByteDance's dual growth logic:
TikTok's e-commerce and advertising revenues have entered a stable growth period and have become the cash flow pillar; the AI business represented by Doubao has opened up future growth space and has become the key catalyst for valuation improvement.
This time, Zhang Yiming's ascent to the top of China's rich list may not be accidental. For a long time in the future, ByteDance's growth logic will still work.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Technology Daily Push" (ID: apptoday). Author: Zhao Zhishan, Editor: Zhou Weipeng. It is published by 36kr with authorization.