TikTok billionaire Zhang Yiming Zhang Yiming Tops China Rich List With $99.7 Billion Fortune

Zhang Yiming Becomes China’s Richest Person Again as AI Replaces Property

Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, is once again China’s richest person. The 2026 Hurun China Rich List, published on October 27, estimates his fortune at 670 billion yuan, about $99.7 billion, up 43% from a year earlier. That is the highest figure ever recorded for China’s richest person. Zhang overtook Zhong Shanshan, the bottled-water entrepreneur who topped last year’s list, whose fortune fell 23% to $61 billion.

Zhang has led the list before, most recently in 2024. This time, the ranking’s significance extends well beyond him. Hurun found that about 160 people on its list, roughly one in ten, made their fortunes from artificial intelligence, making AI the largest single source of wealth in the ranking. For the first time, no mainland Chinese property developer appears in the top 100. Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun’s chairman and chief researcher, described Zhang’s gains as “almost all of it on the back of AI.” He also said: “The era when property was China’s wealth-creation engine is definitively over.”

For executives and investors, the list maps a structural shift in the world’s second-largest economy. Wealth is moving quickly toward technology and AI companies, while consumer, manufacturing and real estate fortunes decline.

How ByteDance’s AI push lifted Zhang’s fortune

Zhang founded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012 and stepped down as chief executive in 2021, but he remains its largest individual shareholder, with an estimated stake of about one-fifth. The company owns TikTok, its Chinese counterpart Douyin and Doubao, which Hurun describes as China’s most widely used AI assistant.

ByteDance’s growth has been driven by advertising across its video platforms and, increasingly, by AI products and services. Its valuation reached about $550 billion in a stake sale by investor General Atlantic in February, and reports during the year said its quarterly revenue had surpassed that of Meta Platforms. ByteDance does not publish audited financial statements, so such figures remain estimates rather than disclosed results.

That distinction matters for interpreting Zhang’s ranking. His fortune is tied overwhelmingly to a private company whose shares do not trade publicly. Hurun’s figure reflects its own assessment of ByteDance’s value as of September 1. It is not a market price, and Zhang could not realize it without a listing or a large transaction.

The international constraint

ByteDance’s international business remains shaped by geopolitics. In January, a new joint venture took over TikTok’s operations in the United States after years of legal and political pressure. Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX each hold 15% of the venture, existing US investors about 30%, and ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake. ByteDance licenses its recommendation algorithm to the new entity, which retrains it on American user data.

The arrangement resolved an existential threat to TikTok in its largest Western market, but it also limits ByteDance’s control over and economic share of that business. Much of the company’s value now depends on its operations in China and other markets, and on its success in AI.

A two-speed wealth economy

The broader list reveals sharply divergent fortunes. Hurun counted 1,529 people worth at least 5 billion yuan, a record, and 1,176 US dollar billionaires, up 155 from last year and just below the record set in 2021. Yet more people on the list saw their wealth fall or stagnate than rise. Hoogewerf observed that “the record was set in a year when the majority of the list saw their wealth go down.”

The winners were concentrated in AI, semiconductors and robotics. Liang Wenfeng, founder of AI developer DeepSeek, debuted in seventh place with about $41.7 billion. Chen Tianshi, chair of AI chipmaker Cambricon, ranked tenth. Wang Xingxing of Unitree Robotics entered the list with $10.3 billion. Robin Zeng of battery maker CATL ranked third.

The losers included some of China’s best-known consumer and internet entrepreneurs. Tencent’s Ma Huateng fell 26% to $51.5 billion. Xiaomi founder Lei Jun was the biggest decliner, with his fortune roughly halving to $25.1 billion. Property developers, once dominant on Chinese wealth rankings, have disappeared from the top tier entirely.

The divergence mirrors the wider economy. China’s growth slowed to 4.5% year on year in the third quarter, and the government has set a 2026 growth target of 4.5% to 5%. Household consumption and property remain weak, while state policy has prioritized technological self-reliance in chips and AI. Capital and talent are following that priority.

What the ranking does and does not show

Rich lists are useful indicators of where value is being created, but they have limitations. Valuations of private companies such as ByteDance and DeepSeek are estimates. Currency movements also affect dollar figures: Hurun used an exchange rate of 6.72 yuan to the dollar, reflecting a stronger yuan than a year earlier, which inflates dollar-denominated gains. Zhang’s increase is 43% in yuan terms. His dollar gain of about $33.8 billion is larger in percentage terms because of the currency shift.

The ranking also says little about liquidity. Many of the newest AI fortunes are concentrated in private or recently listed companies whose valuations could change quickly if expectations for AI adjust.

Why this matters for business leaders

For global investors, the list confirms that China’s most dynamic private wealth creation is now concentrated in AI and advanced technology. That reinforces the strategic importance of those sectors and the competition with the United States in them.

For multinational companies, the decline of property and consumer fortunes signals continued weakness in sectors that once drove Chinese demand. Strategies built on Chinese consumption growth may need to be recalibrated.

For wealth managers and family offices, the shift means that much new Chinese wealth is held in illiquid, concentrated technology stakes that carry valuation, regulatory and geopolitical risk.

Executive Takeaways

• What changed: Zhang Yiming reclaimed the top spot on China’s rich list with a record fortune of about $99.7 billion, while AI became the largest source of new wealth and property developers vanished from the top 100.
• Why it matters: China’s wealth creation has shifted decisively toward technology and AI, reflecting both market forces and national policy priorities.
• What leaders should do next: Recalibrate China exposure toward technology-driven growth, treat private AI valuations with caution, and monitor how geopolitical constraints shape the international expansion of Chinese technology companies.

Over the next 12 to 24 months, the indicators to watch are any move by ByteDance toward a public listing, Doubao’s monetization, the performance of the TikTok US joint venture, and whether China’s AI valuations hold if global enthusiasm for the sector cools. The principal uncertainty is whether AI can generate broad-based economic growth in China or will continue to concentrate wealth among a small group of founders. Zhang’s fortune is a measure of ByteDance’s success. The list as a whole is a measure of how unevenly that success is spreading.

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