TikTok's Zhang Yiming passes Adani as Asia's richest at $105 billion

Zhang Yiming, the 43-year-old Chinese technology entrepreneur who founded ByteDance, has become Asia's richest person for the first time, overtaking Indian industrialist Gautam Adani.

Zhang is worth more than $105 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, an eightfold increase on the $13 billion recorded in March 2019, when Bloomberg began tracking his wealth.

The rise came despite a three-year regulatory fight in the United States that came close to shutting TikTok, ByteDance's short-video app, out of its largest Western market. That ended in January 2026 with an agreement creating a US venture involving Oracle and Silver Lake.

The app's survival preserved the asset underpinning most of Zhang's fortune. ByteDance remains privately held, so his wealth is an estimate based on the company's valuation rather than a traded share price.

Zhang's ascent tracks a wider shift. Fortunes tied to artificial intelligence have climbed past those built in traditional industry, and the top of Asia's wealth table has reordered accordingly within a single year.

He passed Mukesh Ambani in June to become Asia's second-richest, at $92.8 billion at the time. Adani then led Asia at $117.4 billion and Ambani sat third at $86.9 billion. Zhang has added more than $12 billion since, and the gap has closed from the other direction too.

Adani's Adani Group spans ports, airports, power and commodities. His airport subsidiary raised $1 billion at an $18 billion valuation earlier this month. The same period has seen technology and AI-linked wealth repriced sharply upward while infrastructure and resources fortunes have not kept pace.