Zhang Yiming (; born April 1, 1983 in

Longyan Longyan (; Hakka: ''Liùng-ngàm''; Longyan dialect: ''Lengngia'') is a prefecture-level city in south-western Fujian Province, China, bordering Guangdong to the south and Jiangxi to the west. History In 736 AD, (the Tang dynasty), the prefect ...

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capi ...

) is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He founded

ByteDance ByteDance Ltd. () is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo and a team of others in 2012, ByteDance developed the video-sharing social networking ...

in 2012 and developed the news aggregator

Toutiao Toutiao (头条, "headlines") or Jinri Toutiao (今日头条, "Today's Headlines") is a Chinese news and information content platform, a core product of the China-based company ByteDance. By analyzing the features of content, users and users' in ...

and the video sharing platform

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version ...

(Douyin/抖音), formerly known as Musical.ly. As of October 2022, Zhang's personal wealth was estimated at US$55 billion according to ''

Bloomberg Billionaires Index The ''Bloomberg Billionaires Index'', launched in March 2012, is a daily ranking of the world's 500 richest people based on their net worth. It draws information from "action in the stock market, economic indicators and news reports", features a ...

'' (US $49.5 billion in net worth by Forbes) which makes him the second-richest person in China after

Zhong Shanshan Zhong Shanshan (, born December 1954) is a Chinese billionaire businessman. He is the founder and chairperson of the Nongfu Spring beverage company, and the majority owner of Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise. As of 2022, he is t ...

. On November 4, 2021, Zhang Yiming stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021.

Early life and career

Zhang was born on April 1, 1983, in Longyang

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. In 2001, he enrolled at

Nankai University Nankai University (NKU or Nankai; ) is a national public research university located in Tianjin, China. It is a prestigious Chinese state Class A Double First Class University approved by the central government of China, and a member of the fo ...

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...

, where he majored in

microelectronics Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture (or microfabrication) of very small electronic designs and components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-sc ...

before changing to

software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

, and graduated in 2005. He met his wife at university. In February 2006, Zhang became the fifth employee and the first engineer at the travel website Kuxun, and he was promoted to technical director a year later. In 2008, Zhang left Kuxun to work for

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

, but he felt stifled by the corporate rules of the company. He soon left Microsoft to join the startup Fanfou, which eventually failed. In 2009, when Kuxun was about to be acquired by

Expedia Expedia Inc. is an online travel agency owned by Expedia Group, an American online travel shopping company based in Seattle. The website and mobile app can be used to book airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, cruise ships, and vacat ...

, Zhang took over Kuxun's real estate search business and started 99fang.com, his first company.

ByteDance

Zhang thought that Chinese smartphone users were struggling to find information in mobile apps available in 2012 and the search giant

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the la ...

was mixing search results with undisclosed advertising. His vision was to push relevant content to users using recommendations generated by

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

. This vision, however, was not shared by most venture capitalists, and he failed to secure funding until Susquehanna International Group agreed to invest in the startup. In August 2012, ByteDance launched the

news app and within two years attracted more than 13 million daily users.

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...

, which rejected Zhang the first time, came around and led a US$100 million investment in the company in 2014. Zhang focused on expanding ByteDance globally, as opposed to other Chinese tech CEOs who focused on the domestic growth of their companies. Zhang 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 bi-monthly town hall meetings and discouraging employees from referring to him as "boss" or "CEO," as is the Chinese convention. In September 2015, ByteDance launched its video sharing app TikTok (known as Douyin in China) with little fanfare. The product was an instant hit with millennials and became popular worldwide. ByteDance bought Musical.ly a year later for US$800 million and integrated it into TikTok. ByteDance's first app, Neihan Duanzi, was shut down in 2018 by the

National Radio and Television Administration The National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) is a ministry-level executive agency controlled by the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Its main task is the administration and supervision of state-owned enterp ...

. In response, Zhang issued an apology stating that the app was "incommensurate with socialist core values", that it had a "weak" implementation of

Xi Jinping Thought Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, commonly abbreviated outside China as Xi Jinping Thought, is a set of policies and ideas derived from the writings and speeches of Chinese Communist Party general s ...

, and promised that ByteDance would "further deepen cooperation" with the ruling

Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...

to better promote its policies. As of late 2018, with more than 1 billion monthly users across its mobile apps, ByteDance is valued at US$75 billion, surpassing

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

to become the most valuable startup in the world. In September 2020, the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

referred to Zhang as a "mouthpiece" of the Chinese Communist Party in a legal filing. In May 2021, he said that he will step down as CEO and will be succeeded by Liang Rubo.

Honours and recognition

Zhang was named in the 2013 China 30 Under 30 list by ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

''. In 2018, he was included in ''Fortune'' magazine's 40 Under 40 list. Zhang was named one of

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

magazine's ''100 Most Influential People of 2019''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zhang, Yiming 1983 births Living people 21st-century Chinese businesspeople ByteDance people Chinese billionaires Chinese computer businesspeople Chinese software engineers Chinese technology company founders Microsoft people Nankai University alumni Businesspeople from Fujian People from Longyan Billionaires from Fujian