- Chinese companies like TikTok’s parent ByteDance are coming under fire.
- ByteDance’s founder is the richest tech billionaire in China.
- These are the 10 richest Chinese billionaires in tech, per Bloomberg’s 2023 Billionaire Index.
TikTok may soon be banned in the US over national security concerns.
A ban would be a blow to the company’s bottom line: Used by more than 150 million users in the US, TikTok is expected to generate $8 billion in advertising revenue by 2024 from Americans alone, according to Insider Intelligence, and the company’s US business, alone, could be worth between $40 and $50 billion, per Bloomberg.
In turn, Zhang Yiming, the CEO of TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, may see his net worth — which sits at $42.3 billion as of April 14 — drop. He is one of many Chinese billionaires who got rich from starting successful tech giants.
These Chinese billionaires are also navigating policies in their own country. In 2020, the Chinese government began cracking down on tech companies with increased regulations. Since then, the Chinese Communist Party has launched initiatives like “Common Prosperity” that aim to redistribute wealth to the masses in a country where income inequality is high. Earlier this year, China reversed some of these policies in response to low GDP growth.
From the CEO of ByteDance to the founder of WeChat, here are the 10 wealthiest Chinese tech billionaires.
All net worth figures are based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of April 14 at 3:30 p.m. ET.
