Zhang Yiming Returns to the Top as China's Richest with a Fortune of 670 Billion Yuan, with Doubao and ByteDance's AI Business as Key Pillars

According to the latest Hurun Rich List, 43-year-old Zhang Yiming has returned to the top as China's richest person with a fortune of 670 billion yuan.

In recent years, his ranking has risen and fallen several times: second in 2022, down to fifth in 2023, topping the list for the first time in 2024, falling back to second in 2025, and now back at number one this year.

In just two years, his wealth went from 350 billion yuan to 670 billion yuan, nearly doubling. Douyin, TikTok and the AI assistant Doubao have propped up ByteDance's performance, and progress in its AI business has led the market to revalue the company, with ByteDance now valued at 3.3 trillion yuan. Every day you scroll through Douyin, ask the AI assistant Doubao questions, watch Hongguo short dramas on the subway... you are all adding to the "richest person's" fortune.

01 Where ByteDance's money comes from: Doubao, Hongguo, AI pharmaceuticals

Data shows that ByteDance's revenue in the first half of 2026 was about $120 billion, up 30% year on year, with net profit of about $20 billion.

At present, ByteDance's main revenue support still comes from mature businesses such as Douyin and TikTok, with advertising and e-commerce being important sources. In the first half of 2026, overseas revenue accounted for more than 30% of the group's total revenue, mainly from TikTok.

Zhang Yiming's 670 billion did not grow out of thin air. Its real trump card is not "having a large model," but having a large number of ready-made business scenarios that allow the model to immediately enter real production and consumption and genuinely make money for the company.

In June 2026, Tan Dai, president of Volcano Engine, disclosed at the Force Conference that the daily average Token calls of the Doubao large model exceeded 180 trillion, an increase of about 1,500 times in two years compared with 120 billion in May 2024.

At the same time, Volcano Engine's Token share in the public cloud MaaS market reached 49.5%, and the number of enterprise customers with annual cumulative Token consumption exceeding 1 trillion has exceeded 200.

Individual users are using it, and enterprises are also connecting to it. Model capabilities have begun to enter broader work scenarios such as programming, agents and multimodal processing.

According to QuestMobile monitoring, in July 2026, the daily active users of Hongguo short dramas reached 168 million, up 107% year on year.

Comparison of daily active users across major platforms

In addition, as of May 2026, the monthly active users of Hongguo's free comic dramas reached about 39.14 million. AI can participate in character design, scene generation and video production, the short drama platform is responsible for distribution, and advertising and content revenue sharing are responsible for commercialization.

Finally, there is bringing AI into healthcare and drug development. For users, ByteDance's Xiaohe Health is developing the Xiaohe AI doctor service; for research and development, Anew Labs, an AI drug discovery business previously incubated by ByteDance, is trying to use AI in drug discovery.

In September 2026, Anew Labs completed $290 million in external financing at a valuation of about $1.5 billion, and ByteDance is expected to still hold 56% of the shares.

One of the most noteworthy figures in the 2026 Hurun Rich List is that more than 160 listed entrepreneurs' wealth comes from AI, accounting for about one-tenth of all listees. AI has become the largest single wealth growth engine this year. The robotics sector has nearly 80 listees.

More notably, among this year's listed companies, there are 263 new faces. Among them, 65% were not on the list ten years ago. The new faces mainly come from the semiconductor, artificial intelligence, robotics and industrial products industries.

The concentration of wealth growth is equally striking. The top ten entrepreneurs with the largest wealth growth contributed 56% of the list's 2.1 trillion yuan in wealth increase, mainly from the AI and semiconductor industries.

In the large model field, Liang Wenfeng entered the top ten on his first appearance on the list. The 41-year-old DeepSeek founder ranks seventh with 280 billion yuan in wealth. Liu Debing and Tang Jie of the large model company Zhipu made the list for the first time with 39.5 billion yuan and 27.5 billion yuan respectively; MiniMax founder Yan Junjie made the list for the first time with 22.5 billion yuan.

AI chips have also created huge wealth. Cambricon founder Chen Tianshi's wealth increased by 25 billion yuan, a rise of 14%, and he ranks tenth with 205 billion yuan. Chen Weiliang of Muxi shares made the list for the first time with 37.5 billion yuan.

A group of new faces has also appeared in the robotics sector. According to Hurun Research Institute statistics, nearly 80 listed entrepreneurs' wealth comes from the robotics industry. DJI founder Wang Tao ranks at the forefront of this sector with 110 billion yuan in wealth, while Unitree Robotics founder Wang Xingxing made the list for the first time, becoming the second-largest new listee with 69.5 billion yuan.

Young entrepreneurs are also accelerating their entry into the wealth list.

According to Hurun Research Institute statistics, there are 59 listed entrepreneurs in the U35 group, of which 6 are self-made entrepreneurs. 33-year-old Moonshot AI founder Yang Zhilin is the top self-made U35 entrepreneur; 35-year-old Insta360 founder Liu Jingkang and 34-year-old Galbot founder Gao Jiyang have also entered this group.

Among the U40 group, there are 40 self-made entrepreneurs. 39-year-old miHoYo founder Cai Haoyu is the top self-made U40 entrepreneur, and 36-year-old Wang Xingxing is also among them.

From more than 160 AI wealth holders, to Liang Wenfeng's 280 billion yuan and Chen Tianshi's 205 billion yuan, to the emergence of young entrepreneurs in batches, the wealth growth brought by AI is no longer an isolated phenomenon of individual companies, but is changing the wealth distribution of the entire technology industry.

Hurun predicts that the candidates with the most potential to challenge for the top spot include: Liang Wenfeng, who rushed directly into the top ten before fully commercializing; 41-year-old Chen Tianshi of Cambricon, who is deeply engaged in domestic AI chips. In addition, there are a new generation of technology entrepreneurs such as Wang Xingxing in the humanoid robot sector and Yang Zhilin in the large model field.

Lively as it is, there is a question worth discussing seriously: has AI actually created so much real wealth, or is the capital market pricing in the future ahead of time? AI has added 200 billion yuan to the richest person's fortune in a year, but what has it added for ordinary workers?

This article comes from the WeChat public account "Crazy Tech Hall", author: Kong Yilin, published by 36Kr with authorization.