Read an overview of Tencent's biggest business moments, from the 2011 WeChat launch to streaming deal with Universal Music Group.

Watch a timeline of Tencent—one of China's earliest tech giants—despite the company's low profile.

Tencent has relatively low name recognition outside of China—despite being the world's biggest video game publisher—operating a 1.4-billion-user messaging network, and holding more than 80 companies with valuations exceeding $1B.

Read a breakdown of WeChat, the central technology in Tencent's empire that boasts roughly 1.4 billion users and hosts e-commerce, payment, and messaging services all in one place.

See a breakdown of Tencent's revenue streams, which include fintech, advertising, games, and social.

Listen to an interview with Tencent's chief financial officer Arthur Wang to hear how the company is leveraging to AI to stay ahead of the technological curve.

In 2018, Tencent's market capitalization hit $580B, surpassing Facebook (now Meta) for the first time.

See a breakdown of every single video game Tencent has invested in.

WeChat has become China's primary news platform, due to expansive user base and legacy media's adoption of the platform.

Understanding TikTok-owner ByteDance's business model

ByteDance has ridden TikTok's major success to become the world's most valuable startup. This deep dive showcases some of the company's smartest moves and tactics, and where it's headed next.

Owned by Tencent, WeBank was China's first digital bank and services 340 million customers.

Creating a digital alternative to the traditional Chinese 'red envelope' payments helped spur WeChat's financial services growth, and helped it become a 'superapp.'

What's the difference between QQ, WeChat, and Weixin?

Tencent owns QQ, Weixin, and WeChat—three separate apps serving different users. QQ launched in 1999 as a youth-focused messenger. Weixin (for China) and WeChat (international) are technically the same app, but split to comply with regional regulations, especially around data and payments.

Listen to a podcast episode that explains how the Chinese discount e-commerce retailer Temu became one of the most downloaded apps in the US.

Watch a tour of Tencent's sprawling headquarters, focused on tech and health, located in China.

Former Temu CEO Colin Huang is among China's richest people

With a $43.3B net worth as of September 2025, Huang was the founder of PDD Holdings, Temu’s parent company.

Created when Tencent launched the first version of its internet messaging platform, QQ, the company's winking penguin has become a ubiquitous cultural presence in China.

Temu was born out of a Chinese company that, at the time, was called Pinduoduo

Today, the company is called PDD Holdings, and owns both Temu and its very similar sister app in China, Pinduoduo.

The world's 50 most valuable private companies

While public companies typically have the highest valuations, private companies get close. This list breaks down the top 50 as of 2025, with SpaceX at the top with a value of $350B, followed by ByteDance. Over three-fifths of the list are located in the US, with eight in China.

TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms of all time

Centered around user-generated short videos, the platform was created by the Chinese technology company ByteDance Ltd. With over 1.8 billion users, the app has become a global force.

The TikTok sale went through in January 2026

The app's ownership is now majority American, though TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who is Chinese, remains on the board of directors. It's unclear what, if anything, has changed for American users, as the company has historically kept the specifics of its algorithm a secret.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on its future

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew dives into how the trendsetting video app and cultural phenomenon works, from what distinguishes its algorithm and drives viral videos, to the challenges of content moderation and digital addiction in this wide-ranging conversation with the head of TED, Chris Anderson.

China is making a deliberate push towards becoming a cashless society, making digital payment services like Tencent's WeBank even more valuable.

A timeline and visuals on TikTok's rapid growth

The app that would become TikTok is known as Douyin in China, and this article recounts its history, acquisition of rival Musical.ly, and rebranding ahead of its lightning growth. One visualization shows how quickly TikTok reached 1B users.

Three AI startup founders broke the record for the youngest self-made billionaire previously set by Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest self-made billionaire in 2006 at 23 years old when Facebook held its initial public offering. In January of 2026, three AI startup founders—Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha—broke Zuckerberg's record and became billionaires at 22 years old.

Read a timeline of all of Elon Musk's business ventures, from the software company Zip2 in the 1990s to Musk's Twitter acquisition.

At 12 years old, Mark Zuckerberg built a messaging platform for his family called 'ZuckNet.'

How TSMC, the world's biggest chip manufacturer, makes money

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has more than 500 clients across the world, but none are bigger or more consequential to its business than Apple. The iPhone maker accounts for 25% of TSMC's total revenue. TSMC controls more than 60% of the global market share in semiconductor manufacturing. Dive into the economics and outlook of this important company here.

See Bloomberg's continuously updated Billionaire Index

This ranking, updated daily, shows a running tally of the world's 500 richest people. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has largely been atop the list, with a net worth of around $723B as of June 2026. Values fluctuate significantly as much of the wealth is tied to equity in companies. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

TikTok boasts nearly 1.8B monthly users

The app has surged in popularity recently, with usage surging during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those users have generated high revenues, too, with over $23B in 2024.

Many of the top companies in the US by market cap began as tech startups

Combined, the top seven companies by market cap in the US as of December 2024—Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla—were worth more than $16T at the time.

In 2024, global ad spend surpassed $1T for the first time

Organizations like GroupM and WARC began predicting this record high in 2023. Five large tech companies (Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Alibaba, and TikTok parent ByteDance) were predicted to account for more than half of all global ad spend in 2024.

Twitch is a live-streaming platform popularized via the broadcast of esports events and users playing video games.

The evolution of X, from startup to Musk-owned giant, reflects rapid tech shifts

Twitter began in 2006 as a side project and grew into a major global platform, widely used for news, activism, and political discourse. Despite mainstream success, it faced ongoing management turmoil, business struggles, and rising concerns over misinformation and user safety.

Visualize the world's top 20 billionaires in 2026

This data visualization shows the 20 wealthiest people in the world as of January 2026. Topping the list with a net worth of more than $713B is Elon Musk, trailed by Larry Page ($258B), Jeff Bezos ($251B), and Larry Ellison ($243B).

Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos' wealth primarily stems from his Amazon ownership stake.

The dot-com boom made Mark Cuban a billionaire

Cuban co-founded AudioNet with Todd Wagner in 1995 before it became Broadcast.com—a web app that allowed people to listen to sports commentary on their computers if they couldn't watch a game. In 1999, Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.7B. By the time the market crashed, Cuban had already sold most of his stock in the company and had become a billionaire.

The world's top streaming services (by subscriber count)

With almost 270 million paying users, Netflix is the dominant force in streaming entertainment. But after enjoying a first-mover advantage for years, competitors are beginning to catch up. Most notable is Amazon, which leverages its Prime subscriptions to bundle Prime Video, and has amassed an estimated 200 million users. See an updated tracker of the world's biggest platforms by audience.

Mark Zuckerberg credits some of Facebook's success to constant evolution

Before becoming the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman was the president of Y Combinator—a startup accelerator company that supported companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and Coinbase. In 2016, Altman interviewed Zuckerberg about creating Facebook and its growth over time. Zuckerberg said that, unlike other companies (think: CourseMatch), Facebook kept growing and adding new features, which prevented the app from becoming obsolete.

Peter Thiel and Elon Musk formed PayPal after merging two dot-com companies

Elon Musk cofounded "X.com," an online banking service, in 1999 with the idea that the web would become a financial repository as internet access expanded and became ingrained in daily life. Peter Thiel cofounded "Confinity" as a digital security service that morphed into a payments system. In 2000, the two merged to form PayPal, and in 2002, they sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5B.

The next technology epoch is here

From ChatGPT to DALL-E, 2022 saw the mainstream emergence of artificial intelligence for consumer use. Here's how these platforms will disrupt today's five biggest tech companies—Apple, Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft.

Critics say WeChat is a surveillance tool for the Chinese government.

Walmart was the first traditional retailer to crack the $1T club

In early 2026, the company joined major tech companies Nvidia, Apple, and Meta (among others) as one of the rare firms with a market capitalization beyond $1T. See the latest top companies here.

TikTok doesn't exist in China

TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., yet only the platform’s sister app Douyin is available in China. That's because the Chinese government regularly censors Douyin—something ByteDance likely believes would degrade TikTok, its international app.

All the products Mukesh Ambani owns in India

The richest person in Asia, Mukesh Ambani, owns dozens of companies in India as part of the conglomerate he inherited from his father and expanded via acquisitions and partnerships. From smartphones and news portals to logistics and video streaming,...

Apple, the tech giant renowned for products like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, started out in a garage in 1976.

Visualize the world's most used ecommerce apps, from Amazon to Shein and Temu.

In 2018, Apple became the world's first publicly traded trillion-dollar company

The valuation was made possible by Steve Jobs' return to the company in 1997, who implemented a simplification strategy by cutting the majority of Apple's existing product line. His promotion of Jony Ive to SVP of industrial design would help popularize Apple through colorful products and marketing.

One Facebook investor turned $500K into $1B

Peter Thiel was Facebook's first big investor. In 2004, he invested $500K into the social network, long before the company owned Instagram or renamed itself "Meta." In 2012, when he sold off most of his stake, he turned that initial $500K investment into more than $1B in cash.

Amazon expanded its business and diversified its offerings by acquiring companies

Amazon’s retail and cloud businesses have been key drivers of the company’s growth over the years, but they haven’t done all the work by themselves. Companies Amazon has acquired include the video doorbell maker Ring, the grocer Whole Foods, the streaming service Twitch, the shoe retailer Zappos, and the film studio MGM.

TikTok explained: how the app became a global phenomenon

Since 2018, the short-form, video-sharing app TikTok has gone from launching in the US to becoming a habit-forming cultural force that’s signed up more than half of the country's population as users.