Who Founded ByteDance?

Zhang Yiming co-founded ByteDance in Beijing in March 2012 and served as its chief executive until November 2021. Before ByteDance he worked at Kuxun, Microsoft and Fanfou and co-founded the property search engine 99fang with Liang Rubo in 2009. His central idea was that smartphones would make recommendation more important than search, so ByteDance built a machine-learning ranking system first and products on top of it: Toutiao in August 2012, Douyin in September 2016 and TikTok about a year later. He pushed early for global expansion, including the November 2017 purchase of Musical.ly, which was merged into TikTok in 2018. In May 2021 he said he would step back from day-to-day management to focus on long-term strategy, and in November 2021 he left the board, while keeping majority voting control, according to Reuters. TikTok's growth made him one of the richest people in China, and 2024 rich-list rankings placed him first in the country.

Zhang Yiming was born in 1983 in Longyan.

Liang Rubo, also written Rubo Liang, co-founded ByteDance with Zhang Yiming in March 2012 and became its chief executive in November 2021, completing a handover Zhang announced that May. He also replaced Zhang as chairman, and ByteDance's own board list names him chairman alongside Arthur Dantchik of Susquehanna International Group, William E. Ford of General Atlantic, Neil Shen of HongShan and Xavier Niel. Before becoming CEO, Liang led ByteDance's human resources function. His tenure has covered China's 2021 technology crackdown, a retreat from most gaming, the US divest-or-ban law and the January 2026 creation of TikTok USDS Joint Venture, in which ByteDance kept 19.9%. He has also overseen the March 2026 agreement to sell Moonton for about $6 billion and a large increase in AI investment, including the Seed 2.0 models released in February 2026 and a $29.6 billion bank loan signed in September 2026. Liang Rubo was born in 1983.