Who founded ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok?

Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

Zhang, a Chinese software engineer and entrepreneur, co-founded ByteDance with Liang Rubo in March 2012. The company’s first major product was Toutiao, a news and content platform built around algorithmic recommendations. Zhang’s central idea was that software could use data and artificial intelligence to match users with information they were likely to find interesting.

ByteDance later applied that recommendation approach to short-form video. It launched Douyin in China in September 2016 and introduced TikTok internationally in 2017. In 2017, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly, then merged it into TikTok in August 2018, helping create the global platform most users know today.

A frequent mix-up is confusing the founder with later executives. Shou Zi Chew became TikTok’s CEO in 2021, while Kevin Mayer briefly served as CEO in 2020. Zhang remained ByteDance’s founder and chairman until stepping down from the company’s leadership in 2021.