Zhang Yiming (Chinese: 张一鸣; born 1 April 1983 in Longyan, Fujian) is a Chinese billionaire internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao, and the video sharing platform TikTok (Douyin/抖音), formerly known as Musical.ly. As of 2019, with more than 1 billion monthly users, ByteDance is valued at US$250 billion, making it the most valuable startup in the world.Zhang's personal wealth is estimated at $60 billion.
Zhang was born on 1 April 1983. In 2001, he enrolled at Nankai University in Tianjin, where he majored in microelectronics before changing to software engineering, 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.[citation needed]
In 2008, Zhang left Kuxun to work for Microsoft, 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, Zhang took over Kuxun's real estate search business and started 99fang.com, his first company.
May 6, 2021 Bloomberg estimated his fortune at $ 44,500 million
