Zhang Yiming

Zhang Yiming (; born 1 April 1983) is a Chinese Internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin (internationally known as TikTok). Zhang is one of the richest individuals in the world, with an estimated net worth of billion , according to Bloomberg. On 4 November 2021, Zhang stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021. According to Reuters, Zhang maintains over 50 percent of ByteDance's voting rights. The surging global popularity of TikTok made Zhang the richest man in China in 2024.

Early life and career Zhang was born on 1 April 1983, in Longyan, Fujian, China. His parents were civil servants and he was an only son. In 2001, he enrolled at Nankai University in Tianjin, where he majored in micro electronics engineering and software engineering. He graduated in 2005 with a BEng in computer engineering. He met his wife at university.

In February 2006, Zhang became the fifth employee and the first engineer at the travel website Kuxun. He was promoted to technical director a year later.

In 2008, Zhang left Kuxun to work for Microsoft, but felt stifled by its corporate rules. He soon left Microsoft to join the startup Fanfou, which eventually failed. In 2009, when Expedia was about to acquire Kuxun, Zhang took over Kuxun's real estate search business and started 99fang.com, his first company. This vision was not shared by most venture capitalists, and he failed to secure funding until Susquehanna International Group agreed to invest in the startup. In March 2012, he founded ByteDance with Liang Rubo in a four-bedroom apartment, and in August of the same year, ByteDance launched the Toutiao news app and within two years attracted more than 13 million daily users. Sequoia Capital, which initially rejected Zhang, came around and led a US$100 million investment in the company in 2014. He insisted that ByteDance's workplace productivity app Lark be targeted at the American, European and Japanese markets, rather than limiting the focus to China as originally proposed. Zhang's management style with ByteDance was modeled on US tech companies such as Google and included bimonthly town hall meetings and discouraging employees from calling him "boss" or "CEO", as is the Chinese convention. The product was an instant hit with millennials and became popular worldwide. A year later in August 2018, ByteDance bought Musical.ly for US$800 million and integrated it into TikTok.

Since late 2018, with more than a billion monthly users across its mobile apps,

In May 2021, Zhang said that he would step down as CEO and be succeeded by Liang Rubo.

In May 2023, The New York Times reported that a former employee accused Zhang in a lawsuit of facilitating bribes to Lu Wei.

Honors and recognition Forbes named Zhang in its 2013 China 30 Under 30 list. In 2018, he was included in Fortune magazine's 40 Under 40 list. Zhang was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2019.