According to statistics published on Thursday by Chinese firm Hurun, Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok parent company ByteDance, saw his personal fortune fall by $17 billion last year. The reasons for the losses are unknown, but Zhang remains the world’s second-richest entrepreneur under the age of 40, with a fortune worth $37 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of US tech giant Meta – the owner of Facebook and Instagram – is ahead of him, with a fortune estimated by Hurun at $68 billion. According to the ranking, Zuckerberg also lost $8 billion in revenue last year.

Zhang cofounded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012, but left the company in 2021 amid regulatory tightening in China’s tech industry. Zhang, a Chinese national, is now based in Singapore.

ByteDance’s success in China’s highly competitive internet sector can be attributed in large part to its popular short video app Douyin (TikTok). According to Hurun, the app is the most valuable startup in the world, with a market capitalisation of $200 billion. TikTok, its international version, is hugely popular with teenagers all over the world, but concerns about national security have made its future uncertain in many countries.

Critics claim TikTok gives Chinese authorities access to global user data, which the company strongly denies.

Nonetheless, the governments of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, as well as the European Commission, have recently banned TikTok on work phones.
And Washington has threatened to outright ban the app, with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew recently hauled before a US congressional hearing to defend it.
The British digital regulator fined TikTok $15.8 million on Tuesday for its use of children’s personal data.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com