Zhang Yiming owns about a quarter of ByteDance, could be worth more than $60 billion.
Just last year, the world's most valuable startup, ByteDance Ltd., was being squeezed from all sides.
The Trump administration wanted the Chinese firm, which owns the ubiquitous TikTok video-sharing platform, to get rid of assets. Beijing was cracking down on tech businesses, and India blacklisted some of its social-media apps.
For all the obstacles, ByteDance kept growing. Now its founder, 38-year-old Zhang Yiming, is among the world's richest people -- a distinction that lately has carried increased risks in China.
Shares of the company trade in the private market at a valuation of more than $250 billion, people familiar with the dealings have said. At that level, Zhang, who owns about a quarter of ByteDance, could be worth more than $60 billion, placing him alongside Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s Pony Ma, bottled-water king Zhong Shanshan and members of the Walton and Koch families in the U.S., according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.