Alex Zhu

DOW -0.88% S&P 500 -1.12% NASDAQ 100 -1.07% HOME TECH The life of TikTok head Alex Zhu, the Musical.ly cofounder in charge of Gen Z's beloved video-sharing app Paige Leskin Nov 24, 2019, 8:55 AM Alex Zhu tiktok John Phillips/Getty Images for TechCrunch TikTok, the viral video-sharing app, is headed up by Alex Zhu, as revealed in a recent New York Times profile. Zhu is the cofounder and former co-CEO of Musical.ly, a US lip-syncing app that TikTok's parent company ByteDance acquired for $1 billion, then shut down and merged into TikTok in 2018. Here's everything we know about the 40-year-old Zhu, who has kept a relatively low profile in his time since Musical.ly shut down and is in charge with heading up TikTok. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Do you work at YouTube? Got a tip about it? Contact this reporter via Signal at +1 (201) 312-4526 using a non-work phone, email at pleskin@businessinsider.com, or Twitter DM at @paigeleskin. (PR pitches by email only please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop. Alex Zhu is a relatively secretive figure, and largely stays out of the media. In a recent profile in The New York Times, the 40-year-old Zhu was described as having "a little artsy oddness." Zhu refers to himself on LinkedIn as a "designtrepreneur," and lists his work location as Mars. alex zhu tiktok Alex Zhu/LinkedIn Source: The New York Times, Alex Zhu on LinkedIn Zhu grew up in Anhui, a landlocked province in eastern China that stretches across two river basins. china anhui province A Hongcun Village scenic spot in Yixian County of east China's Anhui Province. Han Xiaoyu/Xinhua via Getty Images Source: The New York Times ADVERTISING Zhu then attended Zhejiang University, one of the most prestigious institutions in China. He studied civil engineering, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 2000. zhejiang university china dowell/Getty Images Source: Alex Zhu on LinkedIn ADVERTISING By 2002, Zhu was hired to run the product design team at WebEx, a videoconferencing software maker later acquired by Cisco. Zhu left WebEx in 2004 to work at the German software company SAP in Shanghai. SAP Hasso Plattner SAP cofounder Hasso Plattner stands behind a lectern bearing the company logo. Reuters/Ralph Orlowski Source: The New York Times, Alex Zhu on LinkedIn ADVERTISING Zhu found his way to the US by 2010 working out of SAP's Bay Area office. He took a special interest in education while there, and came up with the idea to develop an app for hosting short-form education videos. Alex Zhu musical.ly Alex Zhu. Greylock Partners/YouTube Source: Business Insider ADVERTISING Throughout 2013, Zhu and Luyu Yang — cofounders and longtime friends —spent six months building the educational app, called Cicada, and raised $250,000. "It was doomed to be a failure," Zhu later told Business Insider. "The day we released this application to the market, we realized it was never going to take off." online course MOOC Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Source: Business Insider With only 8% of their money remaining, Zhu was determined to brainstorm a new idea instead of returning the funding to investors. As the team scrambled, Zhu took a brief gig at Microsoft driving its "mobile disruption" initiatives in the summer of 2014. bill gates microsoft antitrust suit Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. Porter Gifford/Getty Images Source: Business Insider, Alex Zhu on LinkedIn Around this time, Zhu embarked on a memorable train ride from San Francisco to Mountain View, California. He noticed a group of teens nearby passing around their phones, half of them listening to music while the other half were taking photos and decorating them in emoji. alex zhu tiktok Before They Were Famous/YouTube Source: Business Insider Zhu thought about how he could combine these different features into a single social app for teens, and the idea for Musical.ly was born. The team behind Cicada turned Zhu's idea into an app in only 30 days, and in July 2014, launched Musical.ly for creating 15-second lip-syncing music videos. Musically Musical.ly app. Musical.ly Source: Business Insider Musical.ly came to the US, and hit its stride when it reached the No. 1 spot in the US iTunes store. That same year, Zhu returned to China to reunite with his Cicada-turned-Muisical.ly cofounder and co-CEO, Yang, to build up the company together out of Shanghai. musically alex zhu The early Musical.ly team split between San Francisco, left, and Shanghai. Musically Source: Business Insider In November 2017, a massive Chinese company called ByteDance acquired Musical.ly for $1 billion. At the time, Zhu said the deal would help Musical.ly to expand into Asian markets as a standalone app. It's not clear how much Zhu made from the acquisition. zhang yiming net worth bytedance tiktok 4x3 ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming. Visual China Group via Getty Images; Ruobing Su/Business Insider Source: Business Insider However, less than a year later, ByteDance shut down Musical.ly and merged it into its existing short-form video app called TikTok. "Combining Musical.ly and TikTok is a natural fit given the shared mission of both experiences — to create a community where everyone can be a creator," Zhu said at the time. Tiktok A 3-D printed figures are seen in front of displayed Tik Tok logo in this picture illustration Reuters Source: Business Insider, Musical.ly Following the death of Musical.ly, Zhu was given the title of TikTok's senior vice president, and stayed on to help with the transition. He then left ByteDance to take some time off to reportedly "rest, go clubbing in Shanghai and listen to jazz." He kept a low profile and stayed out of the media. alex zhu tiktok John Phillips/Getty Images for TechCrunch Source: Musical.ly, The New York Times Then, Zhu rejoined the TikTok team earlier this year, not long after ByteDance achieved a $75 billion valuation. Zhu then took over as head of TikTok, he revealed in a November interview with the Times. Man walks past a sign of ByteDance's app TikTok, known locally as Douyin, at an expo in Hangzhou A man holding a phone walks past a sign of Chinese company ByteDance's app TikTok, known locally as Douyin, at the International Artificial Products Expo in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China October 18, 2019. China Stringer Network/Reuters Source: The New York Times Zhu's interview came at a tricky time for TikTok, which faces scrutiny in the US over allegations it censors content dealing with "highly controversial topics" at the request of the Chinese government. Zhu told the Times that if China's president ever asked him to take down a video from TikTok or access users' data, he would refuse. alex zhu tiktok Greylock Partners/YouTube Source: Business Insider Exclusive FREE Report: The Stories Slide Deck by Business Insider Intelligence NEWSLETTER Get a daily round up of our most popular tech stories. Sign up for our Tech newsletter. 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