Zhang Yiming, 43, is now the richest person in Asia at more than $105 billion, ahead of Adani Group’s Gautam Adani for the first time, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His stake gained over $12 billion this month after Bloomberg took in fresh ByteDance valuations from BlackRock, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price, then applied its standard 10% discount for a company whose shares don’t trade. That’s roughly eight times the $13 billion he was worth in March 2019, when the index began counting him. ByteDance handed part of its US business to American owners this year, ending the fight that nearly cost TikTok the market, and it has since put its weight behind the Doubao chatbot and Seedance, its video model.
