2 min readUpdated: Sep 16, 2026 06:39 PM IST

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has become Asia’s richest person for the first time, overtaking Indian billionaire Gautam Adani as his fortune crossed $105 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

His fortune has increased more than eightfold from $13 billion in March 2019, when Bloomberg began tracking his wealth, boosted by the higher valuation of ByteDance and growing investor interest in its AI products, including Doubao and Seedance.

The latest rankings have placed Zhang ahead of Adani on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, highlighting the growing influence of AI and consumer platforms on Asian billionaire fortunes and wealth rankings.

How Zhang built his fortune

Zhang’s wealth is closely tied to TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, which over time has emerged as one of the world’s biggest social media platforms.

The organisation has also expanded its presence rapidly in the field of artificial intelligence, with products like the Doubao chatbot and the Seedance video-generation tool.

Zhang continued with his investments in AI even as TikTok faced intense scrutiny in the United States.

Earlier this year, ByteDance transferred parts of TikTok’s US operations to American investors, easing uncertainty over the app’s future in the country.

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Before taking over Asia’s top spot, Zhang was already China’s richest, with his wealth driven by TikTok’s global reach and ByteDance’s expanding AI business.

bloomberg billionaires, (AI-generated image)

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Bloomberg Billionaires Index

The world’s 20 richest

One man is worth more than the next three combined. At the other end of the table, Asia’s richest changed hands this morning.

Changed today

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has passed Gautam Adani to become Asia’s richest person for the first time. Both sit on about $105 billion, but Zhang is now ahead — an eightfold rise from the $13 billion Bloomberg first recorded for him in March 2019.

Figures as of the latest available index reading, compiled September 16, 2026. The index revalues after every New York close, so these numbers move daily.

Bars scaled against Musk at 100%

1

Elon Musk

Tesla, SpaceX · United States

$892B

2

Larry Page

Alphabet · United States

$295B

3

Jeff Bezos

Amazon · United States

$274B

4

Sergey Brin

Alphabet · United States

$266B

5

Michael Dell

Dell · United States

$245B

6

Mark Zuckerberg

Meta · United States

$229B

7

Larry Ellison

Oracle · United States

$208B

8

Jensen Huang

Nvidia · United States

$181B

9

Steve Ballmer

Microsoft · United States

$172B

10

Warren Buffett

Berkshire Hathaway · United States

$144B

11

Bernard Arnault

LVMH · France

$143B

12

Jim Walton

Walmart · United States

$136B

13

Amancio Ortega

Inditex · Spain

$133B

14

Rob Walton

Walmart · United States

$133B

15

Alice Walton

Walmart · United States

$132B

16

Carlos Slim

América Móvil · Mexico

$124B

17

Bill Gates

Microsoft · United States

$113B

18

Zhang Yiming

ByteDance · China

$105B

19

Thomas Peterffy

Interactive Brokers · United States

$105B

20

Gautam Adani

Adani Group · India

$105B

Technology
Finance
Telecoms
Industrial

Asia’s new number one

Who is Zhang Yiming?

Five things about the man who displaced Gautam Adani.

1

He built TikTok’s parent, then stopped running it

He founded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012 and stepped down as chief executive in November 2021, completing a handover announced that May. He has stayed out of the operational seat since.

2

At 43, he is a generational outlier

Almost everyone else in the global top 20 is in their fifties, sixties or seventies. Warren Buffett, at tenth, is 96.

3

His fortune has risen eightfold in seven years

Bloomberg first tracked him at $13 billion in March 2019. He passed Mukesh Ambani to become Asia’s second-richest in June, and Adani today.

4

It is the AI business moving the number, not TikTok

ByteDance’s Doubao chatbot has passed 300 million monthly users and is the most popular in China. Bloomberg’s revaluation drew on marks from BlackRock, Fidelity and T Rowe Price.

5

The thing capping his valuation is gone

The TikTok standoff with Washington was settled in January 2026, when ByteDance agreed a US joint venture with Oracle and Silver Lake, removing the threat of a forced shutdown.

How firm is $105 billion?

Less firm than the figures above him. ByteDance is private, so this is not marked to market the way Musk’s Tesla stake is — Bloomberg is valuing an unlisted company from investor marks. That is precisely where Bloomberg and Forbes have historically diverged by tens of billions on the same person.

The India reading

Gautam Adani is the only Indian in the top 20, and he enters it at the bottom having just lost the Asia crown. Mukesh Ambani sits outside this table in 23rd place, on about $81 billion.

Sources: Bloomberg Billionaires Index; Bloomberg News.

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