Zhang Yiming Biography
Zhang Yiming is an internet entrepreneur from China. He created ByteDance in 2012 and developed Toutiao, a news aggregator, and TikTok, formerly known as Musical.ly, a video sharing platform.
How old is Zhang Yiming? – Age
He is 39 years old as of April 2022 He was born in 1983 in Longyan, China.
Zhang Yiming Education
He began his studies at Tianjin’s Nankai University in 2001, majoring in microelectronics before switching to software engineering and graduating in 2005.
Zhang Yiming Wife
He is married to a misterious woman who he met at university.
Zhang Yiming TikTok
With minimal fanfare, ByteDance debuted its video-sharing software TikTok (known in China as Douyin) in September 2015. The product was an instant hit with millennials and quickly grew in popularity around the world. A year later, ByteDance purchased Musical.ly for $800 million and integrated it into TikTok.
Why is Zhang Yiming so Rich?
Yiming is the co-founder and former CEO and chairman of ByteDance, one of China’s leading media content platforms. In 2020, the privately-owned business raised new investment money at a $180 billion value; Zhang maintains a 22 percent ownership in ByteDance.
Sequoia Capital China is a shareholder in ByteDance, which is best known for its news app Toutiao and social video platform TikTok. President Trump ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations in August 2020, but the deal never materialized. Zhang was named to the Forbes China 30 Under 30 List in 2013.
Zhang Yiming Net Worth
Zhang’s personal worth was expected to reach $44.5 billion in 2022, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Zhang Yiming Career
Zhang believed that Chinese smartphone users were having difficulty finding information in 2012 mobile apps and that the search firm Baidu was combining search results with undisclosed advertising. His idea was to leverage artificial intelligence-generated suggestions to promote relevant material to viewers. Most venture investors, however, did not share his vision, and he was unable to acquire finance until Susquehanna International Group agreed to invest in the company. ByteDance created the Toutiao news app in August 2012, and it gained more than 13 million daily users in less than two years. After first rejecting Zhang, Sequoia Capital changed its mind and led a $100 million investment in the company in 2014.
In contrast to other Chinese tech CEOs, Zhang focused on expanding ByteDance abroad, rather than focusing on their companies’ domestic growth. Instead of focusing solely on China, Zhang requested that ByteDance’s workplace productivity app Lark be targeted towards the American, European, and Japanese markets. Zhang’s management style at ByteDance was based on that of US internet giants like Google, with bi-monthly town hall meetings and a policy prohibiting staff from referring to him as “boss” or “CEO,” as is customary in China.
The National Radio and Television Administration took down ByteDance’s initial app, Neihan Duanzi, in 2018. In response, Zhang apologized, saying the app was “incompatible with socialist basic values,” that its application of Xi Jinping Thought was “poor,” and that ByteDance will “further strengthen the cooperation” with the ruling Chinese Communist Party to better promote its goals.
ByteDance is the most valuable startup in the world, with over 1 billion monthly users across its mobile apps as of late 2018, surpassing Uber to become the most valuable startup in the world. In a legal filing in September 2020, the US Department of Justice referred to Zhang as a “mouthpiece” of the Chinese Communist Party. He announced his resignation as CEO in May 2021, and Rubo Liang will succeed him.
