New Delhi, Sept. 17 -- Zhang Yiming, ByteDance founder, has unseated Gautam Adani to become Asia's wealthiest individual for the first time, driven by surging valuations across the artificial intelligence landscape.

The 43-year-old's fortune now exceeds $105 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index-up more than eightfold from $13 billion in March 2019.

For the TikTok founder, the feat represents a historic rebound after years of intense regulatory turbulence that nearly dismantled the company's US footprint.

43-year-old Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance Ltd in 2012 in a four-bedroom Beijing apartment and developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform TikTok.

He is currently Asia's richest person, with ...