ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has become Asia’s richest person for the first time, with personal wealth exceeding $105 billion as of September 16, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The 43-year-old narrowly surpassed Gautam Adani, founder of India’s Adani Group, whose fortune stood at $104.8 billion. Zhang’s wealth was approximately $13 billion when Bloomberg began tracking it in March 2019; the latest account describes the increase as roughly sevenfold, while the earlier record characterized it as eightfold. His ByteDance stake remains the main source of his fortune, supported by TikTok’s global expansion and the company’s large investment in artificial intelligence. ByteDance reportedly generated about $120 billion in revenue and $20 billion in net profit in the first half of 2026. Revenue rose roughly 30% year over year, while profit declined by a single-digit percentage as the company increased spending on AI infrastructure, cloud services and large language models. Advertising and TikTok e-commerce led revenue growth, with overseas sales accounting for more than 30% of the total. ByteDance has also advanced the commercialization of its Doubao chatbot and Seedance video-generation model and recently completed an approximately $29.6 billion bank loan for general corporate purposes. Mukesh Ambani ranked third in Asia, followed by Tadashi Yanai and Zhong Shanshan, while Zhang ranked 18th worldwide.