ByteDance

Zhang Yiming belongs to Group 4 - Mobile/e-commerce. The mobile/e-commerce group covers founders who built the smartphone-era platforms of the 2010s — ride-hailing (Didi), social commerce (Pinduoduo), local services (Meituan), short video (Kuaishou), logistics (SF Express, ZTO), and e-commerce at scale (JD.com) — a cohort whose businesses were shaped by the mobile-internet transition and, for several, by the 2020-2021 regulatory tightening.

Zhang Yiming — founder profiled in the Chinese Founder Ledger — is documented as follows: nankai University-trained engineer who founded ByteDance in 2012, developed news aggregator Toutiao and short-video platform Douyin (known internationally as TikTok), and stepped down as CEO in November 2021 while retaining the chairman title and majority voting control. The profile is grounded in the 1 sources indexed for this founder.

Zhang Yiming's role is documented as: founder and Chairman of ByteDance; stepped down as CEO on November 4, 2021, completing a handover announced in May 2021 Wikipedia's infobox lists his title as 'Founder & Chairman of ByteDance' and states he stepped down as CEO on November 4, 2021, while retaining over 50% of ByteDance's voting rights per Reuters as cited by Wikipedia (research date: 2026-08-23).

Zhang Yiming's ByteDance zhang is a co-founder of ByteDance, Zhang stepped down as chief executive in May 2021. As of August 23, 2026 : Last change No change.

Zhang Yiming's ByteDance chinese billionaire Zhang Yiming has stepped down as chairman of TikTok owner ByteDance, joining a .

Zhang Yiming's ByteDance mar 26, 2025 · Zhang Yiming is the billionaire founder of ByteDance, the parent company behind TikTok. He's now China's richest man.

At age 39, Su announced he was stepping down as CEO to focus on developing Kuaishou's long-term strategy, becoming the third Chinese tech billionaire that year (following ByteDance's Zhang Yiming and Pinduoduo's Colin Huang) to relinquish day-to-day operational control amid the government's tech-sector crackdown.

Following Beijing's crackdown on the once high-flying off-campus tutoring sector, Yu made his debut as a live-streaming e-commerce host on ByteDance-owned Douyin, where he reiterated plans to launch a live-streaming e-commerce platform for farm products.

Kuaishou had gone public in Hong Kong earlier in 2021 and had grown into China's second-largest short-video platform after ByteDance's Douyin, per SCMP.

Zhang was born April 1, 1983 in Longyan, Fujian, and studied microelectronics engineering at Nankai University in Tianjin before founding ByteDance in 2012.

Zhang announced in May 2021 that he would step down as CEO, completing the handover on November 4, 2021, while remaining chairman and retaining more than 50 percent of ByteDance's voting rights, per Reuters as cited by Wikipedia.

Bloomberg estimated Zhang's net worth at $92.8 billion as of June 2026, and Wikipedia states the global popularity of TikTok made him the richest man in China in 2024.

Stepped down as CEO of ByteDance on November 4, 2021, completing a handover announced in May 2021, while remaining chairman.

Zhang retained the chairman title and majority voting control of ByteDance after the CEO handover, and TikTok's continued global growth made him the richest person in China by 2024, per Wikipedia's citation of Bloomberg data.