Lokesh Choudhary · · 2 min readByteDance founder calls Singapore home, TikTok lawsuit against US shows
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ByteDance’s founder Zhang Yiming, while still a Chinese citizen, has chosen Singapore as his current residence, Fortune reported.
Zhang’s current residence was revealed in TikTok’s lawsuit against the US legislation that requires ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok.
In 2022, The Information also reported that Zhang had been spending most of his time in Singapore, with people close to him claiming at the time that his move may have stemmed from tighter tech regulations in China.
Legal documents of the lawsuit show Zhang owns 21% of the company – worth around US$40 billion when taking into account ByteDance’s US$268 billion valuation as of December 2023. The remaining 79% of ByteDance is held by global investors and employees.
Some other top execs, such as ByteDance co-founder Liang Rubo and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, also reside in Singapore.
Notably, TikTok and its parent firm ByteDance are pursuing legal action to combat a US law that mandates ByteDance to sell the short-video app.
ByteDance was given until January 19, 2025 to sell TikTok, failing which the app will be blocked nationally. But according to the lawsuit, selling off TikTok is not conceivable from a practical or legal standpoint.
In the past, ByteDance declared that should it lose the battle to have the app banned in the US, it would decide to sell rather than close its US operations.
See also: Shopee ramps up short-video efforts, but can it fend off TikTok Shop?
Editing by Miguel Cordon and Dhania Putri Sarahtika
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