Zhang Yimin , the founder of the Chinese “ByteDance” group that owns the “ TikTok ” application, decreased by $ 17 billion last year, according to a new classification published Thursday.

The reasons for the losses are unknown, but Zhang is still the second richest businessman in the world under the age of 40, with an estimated fortune of $37 billion, according to statistics published by the Chinese company Hurun.

He is preceded in this classification by Mark Zuckerberg, the head of the giant American Meta check that owns Facebook and Instagram, whose fortune Huron estimated at $ 68 billion.

According to the ranking, Zuckerberg also lost nearly $8 billion in money last year.

Zhang co-founded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012, but resigned from the group in 2021 amid restrictions imposed by Chinese authorities on technology companies.

Zhang is a Chinese national who currently resides in Singapore.

ByteDance's success in China's highly competitive internet sector is largely due to the popular short-video app Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

The app is the most valuable startup in the world, with a market value of $200 billion, according to Huron.

Its international version, TikTok, is very popular with teenagers around the world, but concerns about national security have made its future uncertain in several countries.

Critics of the app say TikTok allows Chinese authorities access to global user data, allegations the company has vehemently denied.

However, the US, Canadian, British and Australian governments, as well as the European Commission, recently banned their officials from downloading the TikTok app on their work phones.

Washington threatened the application with a complete ban, with TikTok President Xu Zi Zhu referred to a recent hearing before the US Congress to defend the application.

On Tuesday, TikTok was fined 12.7 million pounds ($15.8 billion) by the British regulator for the digital sector over its use of children's personal data.