BEIJING : Zhang Yiming , the founder of TikTok parent company ByteDance, saw his personal fortune fall by US$17 billion last year, according to a new Chinese ranking published Thursday .
Ahead of him is Mark Zuckerberg, boss of US tech giant Meta -- the owner of Facebook and Instagram -- whose fortune was estimated by Hurun at $68 billion.Zhang co-founded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012, but resigned from the group in 2021 in the midst of regulatory tightening on China's tech industry.ByteDance's success in China's highly competitive internet sector has been largely thanks to its popular short video app Douyin.
Its international version, TikTok, is wildly popular with teenagers around the world, but concerns over national security have left its future uncertain in many countries. Still, the US, Canadian, British and Australian governments, as well as the European Commission, have recently banned their officials from installing TikTok on work phones.