#28

Zhang Yiming

Source of wealth: TikTok

42 years Male Technology 🇨🇳 CN

Net Worth

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Earnings per second

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Biography

Zhang Yiming is the main cofounder of Chinese tech giant ByteDance, best known for its insanely popular app TikTok, which has more than 1 billion users worldwide.

It also has interests in e-commerce, education, gaming and news.

Zhang stepped down as chairman of ByteDance in 2021 after resigning as CEO earlier that year, reportedly under pressure from the Chinese government.

The company continues to operate TikTok in the U.S. as it keeps winning reprieves from an earlier ban.

Zhang started ByteDance in 2012 in a four-bedroom Beijing apartment.

Perspective on their fortune

Gold

Everyday luxury

A Zhang Yiming's fortune is equivalent to 467 of gold, but this may be difficult to value, as we don't usually have a handful of gold bars in our piggy bank.

A standard gold ring typically weighs between 4 and 7 grams. Let's say this one weighs 5 grams. It's usually 18k gold.

Based on today's gold price (not taking into account the jeweler's fee, shipping, or anything else), that gold ring would be worth $556.3

Zhang Yiming could buy 124,573,087 gold rings. That's a lot of fingers and a lot of gifts!!

And if the number of rings is difficult to visualize, all these rings would need 22 trucks to transport them, But we can be almost certain that Zhang Yiming will have enough left over to pay for the gas for those trucks.

🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚

While billions of people struggle to access basic healthcare, education, and research, a single individual could fund entire national systems for centuries.

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Health

The price of life

Let's compare Zhang Yiming's fortune with the healthcare spending of a huge country

Zhang Yiming could fund the entire healthcare system of DR Congo with a population of over 105,800,000 of inhabitants for approximately 31.2 years.

But even if we compare their fortune to that of a rich country

At the other extreme, Zhang Yiming could cover the health expenditure of Luxembourg, considered the world's most heavily invested health system, for 13.8 years

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Education

Buying the future

Lowest education spending

Zhang Yiming could assume the entire cost of the education system of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with more than 243,000,000 inhabitants for 20.4 years.

Highest education spending

But not only could he assume the cost of a poor country, Luxembourg is considered the country with the highest per capita investment in education in the world, Zhang Yiming could pay for it in full for 27.7 years.

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Research

The monopoly of progress

Lowest research spending

Zhang Yiming could fully fund the state research budget of Pakistan, the fifth most populous country in the world with more than 260,000,000 of inhabitants, for 116.7 years.

Highest research spending

But even if we compare the total wealth of Zhang Yiming with Israel, the country that currently invests the most per capita in research in the world, it could assume the total cost of the system for 2.6 years.