Zhang Yiming: Is there a single family office?

Where does the fortune of Zhang Yiming come from?

Zhang Yiming is a billionaire Chinese internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance (the parent company of TikTok) in 2012 and developed the news aggregator Toutiao. With more than 1 billion monthly users, ByteDance is valued at $400 billion in 2021, making it the most valuable startup in the world.

Update 2024: Zhang’s personal wealth is estimated at $43.4 billion, securing him a place on the list of China’s richest people..

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How did Yiming’s company ByteDance develop?

ByteDance is a multinational internet technology company based in Beijing. It was founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming. Zhang was enrolled at Nankai University in Tianjin, where he majored in microelectronics before switching to software engineering, graduating in 2005. In 2012, Zhang thought that Chinese smartphone users were struggling to find information in the mobile apps available, and that search giant Baidu was mixing search results with undisclosed advertising. His vision was to push relevant content to users using recommendations generated by artificial intelligence. In August 2012, ByteDance launched the Toutiao news app, which attracted more than 13 million daily users within two years. The app started as a news recommendation engine and evolved into a platform that delivers content in various formats, such as text, images, question-and-answer posts, microblogs and videos. Sequoia Capital, which turned down Zhang the first time, came around and led a $100 million investment in the company in 2014. In September 2015, ByteDance launched its video-sharing app TikTok. The product was an instant hit with millennials and became popular around the world. A year later, ByteDance bought Musical.ly for $800 million and integrated it into TikTok. Today ByteDance counts more than 1 billion monthly users and generates revenues of $120 billion in 2023. But did he set up a Zhang Yiming family office to mangae his wealth?

Is there a Zhang Yiming family office?

According to our research team, there is no specific organisation that acts as Zhang Yiming’s personal single family office. After stepping down as CEO and Chairman of ByteDance in 2021, Zhang looked for new investment opportunities. He set up a new venture company in Hong Kong called Cool River Venture. The firm will invest mainly in technology-related industries. This is all that is known, as Yiming is very secretive about his business activities.

This article is part of our detailed report “The Single Family Offices of Asian Billionaires and HNWIs“.

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