Artificial intelligence is reshaping who becomes rich in China. In just a few minutes you’ll see why AI now dominates the country’s wealth rankings.

Zhang Yiming, the 43‑year‑old founder of ByteDance, saw his net worth jump 43 % to almost US$100 billion, returning him to the number‑one spot on the Hurun China Rich List. Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report’s chairman and chief researcher, said this reflects AI’s emergence as “the largest single wealth engine” on the list.

ByteDance has been pouring money into AI, launching products such as the Doubao chatbot, now China’s most‑used AI assistant, and the video‑generation tool Seedance. These investments illustrate how AI is fueling the company’s rapid wealth growth.

About 160 people on the list – roughly one in ten – now earn their fortunes from AI, Hoogewerf noted, and AI and hard‑tech fortunes are replacing wealth built in traditional sectors. AI founders Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek ($41.7 billion) and Chen Tianshi of Cambricon Technologies ($30.5 billion) have broken into the top ten, showing how quickly AI can create new billionaires.

For the first time ever, no mainland property developer appears in the Top 100, while a decade ago one‑third of the list were real‑estate firms, according to Rupert Hoogewerf. This shift shows AI‑driven fortunes overtaking traditional sectors.

The disappearance of mainland property developers from the Top 100 marks a historic shift in China’s economy. It signals that AI, not real‑estate, is now the main engine of new wealth.