TikTok founder, Zhang Yiming, 41, is now China’s richest person

China has a new richest person and it’s the entrepreneur behind the app TikTok.

Zhang Yiming, 41, co-founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, topped the 2024 Hurun China Rich List, released Tuesday, October 29.

His wealth reached $49.3 billion, as assessed by research, media and investment group Hurun Inc, which publishes the ranking of the country’s richest people.

Zhang’s ascendency comes after ByteDance’s global revenue grew 30% last year to $110 billion, Hurun said.

Since its official launch in May 2017, TikTok has been catapulted to mass global popularity as well as becoming an era-defining social media platform beloved by many young people around the world.

Zhang owns 20% of ByteDance, which he co-founded with college roommate Liang Rubo in Beijing in 2012. He stepped down as its CEO 2021 after building ByteDance into one of the biggest names in Chinese tech.

ByteDance also holds China’s popular news app Toutiao and Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China.

Zhang’s rise to the top of the rich list knocked China’s “bottled water king” Zhong Shanshan out of the lead spot for the first time in three years, though he remained second.