“They said 1.9 billion people use it”: ByteDance founder is China’s richest person, with a fortune of 134 trillion won

[Financial News] Zhang Yiming, 43, founder of ByteDance, the parent company of video platform TikTok, has reclaimed the title of China’s richest person.
According to the 2026 Hurun China Rich List released by the Hurun Research Institute on the 27th, Zhang Yiming topped the list with a fortune of 670 billion yuan (about 134 trillion won). For the first time, the fortune of China’s richest person exceeded 600 billion yuan, setting a new record.
This is the second time Zhang Yiming has become China’s richest person, and his fortune was reported to have increased by 200 billion yuan from last year.
Most of Zhang Yiming’s fortune is believed to come from ByteDance. ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok, a platform with at least 1.9 billion active users in about 150 countries worldwide. The Hurun Research Institute valued ByteDance at 3.3 trillion yuan, and Zhang owns at least a 20% stake in the company.
The expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) business is behind the 200 billion yuan surge in Zhang Yiming’s fortune in just one year. After Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and the global video platform TikTok, ByteDance is expanding its business with its AI chatbot Doubao.
Doubao has grown into China’s AI service with the largest number of users, prompting a reassessment of ByteDance’s corporate value.
Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, ranked seventh with a fortune of 280 billion yuan (about 56 trillion won). This is the first year Liang has appeared on the list. He was not included last year, partly because he had said he would not pursue the commercialization of DeepSeek.
A large number of newly wealthy individuals also emerged in AI and semiconductors. Liu Debing (39.5 billion yuan) and Tang Jie (27.5 billion yuan), founders of Chinese AI company Zhipu AI, made the list for the first time. Chen Tianshi, founder of Chinese AI semiconductor company Cambricon Technologies, entered the top 10 with a fortune of 205 billion yuan, up 25 billion yuan.
At least 160 of the wealthy individuals on this year’s list accumulated their fortunes in AI-related industries. The Hurun Research Institute said the AI industry had emerged as a key driver of new wealth creation in China.
Meanwhile, according to the Hurun Research Institute, which has published an annual rich list since 1999, the number of people with fortunes exceeding 5 billion yuan reached a record 1,529 this year, up 6.6% from last year. The number of billionaires in China rose by 155 from last year to 1,176. That was 176 more than in the United States, but still below the previous record of 1,185 in 2021. The Hurun Research Institute forecast that China would eventually see ultra-wealthy individuals with fortunes exceeding 1 trillion yuan (about 200 trillion won).
By contrast, while newly wealthy individuals have been emerging in high-tech fields such as AI and semiconductors, real estate and traditional manufacturing continue to struggle. In particular, for the first time this year, not a single entrepreneur from a mainland Chinese real estate developer made the top 100 richest list, a sign that the divide between industries is deepening.
[email protected] Kim Hee-sun Reporter