ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming reclaimed the title of China's richest person with a fortune of approximately $100 billion, a record for the top spot on the Hurun China Rich List, released on Oct. 271,3,5. His wealth rose 43% in a year, driven by ByteDance's aggressive expansion into artificial intelligence.
Hurun Report chairman Rupert Hoogewerf said Zhang's fortune was built "almost all of it on the back of AI" and noted that ByteDance's Doubao is China's most-used AI assistant. ByteDance's valuation reached 3.3 trillion yuan.
AI as wealth engine
The list's most consequential signal for the AI industry: 160 listees, roughly one in ten, now derive their fortunes from AI, making it the single largest engine of wealth creation on the ranking. "AI is the biggest single wealth engine on this list: 160 Hurun rich listers — 1 in 10 — now make their money from AI," Hoogewerf said.
DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng debuted at No. 7 with 280 billion yuan, while Cambricon chairman Chen Tianshi entered the top ten with 205 billion yuan. Wealth among entrepreneurs in AI, semiconductors, and robotics rose broadly2.
Platform and consumer fortunes fade
The gains at the top came at the expense of traditional consumer and internet fortunes. Bottled water magnate Zhong Shanshan fell to second place with $61 billion, down 23%. Xiaomi chairman Lei Jun saw his wealth halve to $25.1 billion. For the first time, no mainland China-based real estate developer appeared in the top 100.
Robin Zeng, chairman of CATL, the world's largest maker of batteries for electric vehicles, ranked third.
The 28th edition of the Hurun Rich List, with wealth calculated as of Sept. 1, 2026, found a record 1,529 individuals with more than 5 billion yuan (about $750 million), up 6.6% from the prior year. The number of U.S.-dollar billionaires rose by 155 to 1,176, which was 176 more than the United States.
ANALYSIS The concentration of new wealth in AI-linked founders, combined with the decline of consumer and real estate fortunes, marks a measurable reordering of China's private-sector wealth hierarchy around hard-tech sectors.
Zhang Yiming stepped down as ByteDance CEO in November 2021 and lives in Singapore, rarely giving interviews4. He founded ByteDance in 2012 and studied software engineering at Nankai University.