Produced by Radar Finance Written by Zhou Hui Edited by Meng Shuai
Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, who just became the richest man in Asia, once again spent heavily to buy land.
On September 21, according to the Beijing Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Commission, Beijing Yunrui Feldspar Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of ByteDance, successfully bid for the OS-15 land parcel of the primary land development project in the southern area of the Olympic Park in Chaoyang District at a reserve price of 2.613 billion yuan.
It is reported that the land is used for business and finance. It is close to Grade A office buildings such as Chengao Building and Huanhui Center, and has a strong office atmosphere. This is the third time ByteDance has purchased land this year, with a cumulative cost of nearly 9 billion yuan.
However, Bye, who frequently acquires land, once had a “tight” time renting a house. Since its establishment in 2012, ByteDance, which has been renting offices for a long time, has moved many times due to office space issues.
It was not until the official opening of the Fangheng Fashion Center purchased for 5 billion yuan in 2020 that ByteDance finally ended its history of not having its own office building.
In fact, in addition to Byte, many major Internet companies have also made plans in the land or real estate market in recent years.
Starting from the second half of 2025, some Tencent employees will gradually move into the “Penguin Island” purchased and constructed in 2019. In the first half of this year, JD.com also spent heavily to buy land again in Yizhuang.
In addition, Zhipu, the “world’s number one large model stock”, also announced in the first half of the year that it planned to acquire 100% equity of Beijing Red Diamond Technology Development Co., Ltd. for no more than 361 million yuan and acquire the Diamond Building for its own use as the company’s headquarters.
The newly crowned Asia’s richest man spends 2.6 billion to buy land again
According to the 21st Century Business Herald, on September 21, two commercial land parcels in Beijing were sold. The land parcels were located in Chaoyang District and Dongcheng District, Beijing. The total transaction amount of the two land parcels reached 5.913 billion yuan.
Among them, Beijing Yunrui Feldspar Technology Co., Ltd. won the OS-15 plot of the primary land development project in the southern area of the Olympic Park in Chaoyang District at a reserve price of 2.613 billion yuan.
Tianyancha information shows that Beijing Yunrui Changshi Technology Co., Ltd. was established in June this year. It is an enterprise mainly engaged in software and information technology services.
After equity penetration, the company’s controlling shareholder is Beijing Zidiao Network Technology Co., Ltd., and its actual controller is ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming.
According to the document, the OS-15 plot won by ByteDance this time is commercial and financial land, with a construction land area of approximately 22,400 square meters and a construction control scale of ≤91,700 square meters.
According to the Daily Economic News, Zhang Kai, head of land market research at the China Index Research Institute, said that the land is located in the Olympic Cultural and Business District between the North Fourth Ring Road and the North Fifth Ring Road, with a floor area ratio of 4.1 and a building control height of 60 to 70 meters. The surrounding Grade A office buildings such as Chengao Building and Huanhui Center have listed rents averaging 6.8 yuan/square meter to 9 yuan/square meter per day, and the office atmosphere is mature.
Zhang Kai’s analysis pointed out, “If the per capita office area is estimated to be 23 square meters, it can accommodate about 4,000 workstations. It will most likely not be used as a retail or rental product in the future, but will continue the idea of Byte’s self-sustained headquarters and carry functions such as headquarters functions, business reception, commercial front desk, or regional coordination.”
It is worth mentioning that not long before this land acquisition, Zhang Yiming had just aspired to become the “richest man in Asia”.
On September 16, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed that the 43-year-old ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming’s net worth had exceeded US$105 billion, surpassing Indian tycoon Gautam Adani and becoming Asia’s richest man for the first time.
Compared with the US$13 billion recorded when Bloomberg first tracked his wealth in March 2019, Zhang Yiming’s personal net worth has increased approximately seven times in seven years.
From renting a house to buying land, Byte doesn’t want to be just a “tenant”
Radar Finance noticed that the OS-15 plot of land located in the Olympic Park in Chaoyang District is actually the third piece of land acquired by ByteDance in Beijing this year.
In February this year, Beijing Yunyue Feldspar Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of ByteDance, won the HD00-1603-01 and HD00-1603-03A land parcels of the Lanjinglijia Acquisition and Storage Project in Haidian District at a base price of 2.8 billion yuan.
Data show that the construction land area of this plot is 39,500 square meters, the scale of the above-ground construction is no more than 96,800 square meters, the transaction price is about 28,900 yuan/square meter, and it is planned to be a comprehensive commercial and financial service industry land.
It is reported that this project has been listed as a key project in Beijing in 2026. It will build a digital economic industrial park integrating high-end office and business facilities. It plans to have 4,200 workstations and 288 hotel rooms, all of which will be self-sustained for 20 years, forming a linkage with surrounding self-sustained properties that have been put into use.
At the end of the next month, Beijing Yunxiu Feldspar Technology Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of ByteDance, successfully transferred a land parcel in the Shuangquanbao area of Xueyuan Road Street, Haidian District, Beijing for a total price of 3.305 billion yuan.
According to the Beijing News, the land is an office and research and development land. It is close to Tsinghua University, Peking University and more than 100 scientific research institutes, and has a strategic location.
However, the Shuangquanbao plot also comes with strict industrial access and tax thresholds, requiring annual tax revenue of not less than 60,000 yuan/square meter; industrial positioning includes artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, Internet 3.0 and other industrial fields, as well as future industrial fields such as the metaverse, brain-computer interface, quantum information, and humanoid robots.
From winning the Lanjinglijia land parcel in Haidian District in February, to bidding for the Shuangquanbao land parcel on Xueyuan Road in Haidian District in March, and then winning the first-level land development project in the south area of the Olympic Park in Chaoyang District in September, in just over half a year, ByteDance has spent nearly 9 billion yuan on land in Beijing alone.
But Bye, who is now a “high-handed” land owner, actually had a “scarce” time renting a house.
Going back to 2012, Zhang Yiming established ByteDance in a private house on Zhichun Road in Beijing. With the development of the company’s business, new blood continues to pour into ByteDance, and the private houses at the beginning of the business gradually cannot meet ByteDance’s office needs.
So, in May 2013, Zhang Yiming rented the tenth floor of Yingdu Building. Subsequently, ByteDance successively leased the eighth, eleventh, and third floors of the building.
Even so, compared with foreign Internet companies of the same level, ByteDance’s office area is still slightly “constricted” – more than 200 ByteDance employees were once densely packed into the 900 square meters of space on the first floor of Yingdu Building.
Since then, as the company’s scale has continued to grow, ByteDance has had to move again and again, centered on Zhichun Road. Employees within the company also laughed at themselves and said that this is an entrepreneurial culture that is “not afraid of moving”.
In 2020, ByteDance officially opened the Fangheng Fashion Center, which it purchased for 5 billion yuan. Since then, Bytedance has finally ended its history of not having its own office building.
It was also since this year that ByteDance became more diligent in purchasing land and buildings. According to incomplete statistics from the media, ByteDance has invested more than 30 billion yuan in buying properties and land in the past six years, with a total construction area of about 1.57 million square meters.
Bytedance’s “confidence” to frequently acquire land is inseparable from the steady growth of the company’s performance. According to the technology media “The Information”, three people familiar with the matter revealed that in the first half of this year, ByteDance achieved revenue of US$120 billion, a year-on-year increase of approximately 30%.
However, during the same period, affected by increased investment in AI, the company’s net profit fell by single digits year-on-year, but the overall scale was still as high as approximately US$20 billion.
Not only Byte, major manufacturers are buying land one after another
In fact, not only ByteDance, but in recent years, major Internet companies no longer want to be just “tenants” and have begun to purchase land.
In the same year that ByteDance purchased Fangheng Fashion Center, Tencent spent 8.52 billion yuan to acquire land parcel A002-0076 in Dachan Bay, located in Xixiang Street, Baoan District, Shenzhen, which is also known as “Penguin Island” by the outside world.
It is understood that “Penguin Island” covers an area of 809,000 square meters, with a total construction area of more than 3 million square meters after completion, and the project investment amount is as high as 31.9 billion yuan.
At that time, Tencent stated after the land transaction was completed that based on the company’s business development and the increase in the number of employees, the existing self-owned properties and leased properties would not be able to meet future office needs. Based on the above considerations, Tencent submitted a land application to the relevant departments in accordance with regulations to meet the company’s mid- to long-term office space needs.
As Tencent’s headquarters in Dachan Bay, Shenzhen, the project is scheduled to be completed in 7 years. According to the plan, “Penguin Island” has a total of 5 blocks, integrating R&D, office, life, and culture. When completed, the park is expected to accommodate more than 80,000 people for office work.
As of August last year, 30% of the park had been completed as planned. Since the trial operation of the completed area in the second half of 2025, some Tencent employees have gradually moved from the Kexing Science Park to “Penguin Island”.
According to Jiupai News, as of May this year, more than 14,000 Tencent and its subsidiaries and outsourced employees have entered the office. By the end of June this year, the number of employees working on “Penguin Island” will reach 28,000.
According to the Beijing News, on April 21 this year, Beijing Qizheng Shuzhi Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of JD.com, won two commercial and financial services land in the YZ00-0303 block of Yizhuang New Town, Beijing, at a reserve price of 1.757 billion yuan.
It is reported that the land is adjacent to Jingdong Group’s Yizhuang headquarters, covering an area of approximately 48,600 square meters and a construction area of approximately 233,200 square meters. According to the transfer requirements, all above-ground and underground buildings must be self-sustained, the commercial part must be self-sustained for 40 years, and the office part must be self-sustained for 50 years.
Yizhuang official Weibo confirmed that the land will be used to build the JD headquarters project. According to incomplete statistics, since its first acquisition of land in the open land market in 2012, JD.com has acquired at least 7 land parcels in the Yizhuang area, with a total transaction volume of more than 10 billion yuan.
According to information announced by the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Resources Online Trading Center on April 20, Hangzhou JD Jiwei Information Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of JD.com, also won a commercial and financial land in the core unit of Hangzhou Century City for 663 million yuan.
It is reported that the land is close to the Qiantang River and adjacent to Metro Line 6. It has an above-ground construction area of approximately 118,000 square meters and a building height of 100 meters.
Radar Finance has noticed that in addition to traditional Internet companies, technology rookies who have become popular with AI have also joined the ranks of property buyers.
In April this year, Zhipu, a Hong Kong-listed company and “the world’s number one large model stock”, announced that it planned to acquire 100% of the equity of Beijing Red Diamond Technology Development Co., Ltd. for no more than 361 million yuan.
The target property held by the target company is located in Diamond Building, Dongbei Wangxi Road, Haidian District, Beijing, with a total construction area of approximately 22,700 square meters.
Zhipu stated in the announcement that it plans to use the property as the company’s headquarters for its own use to meet daily administrative and large-scale business operation needs. It is expected to improve operational efficiency and operational stability, thereby optimizing the company’s asset structure. The potential value of the target properties is expected to support the company’s long-term strategic planning and enhance the overall ability to resist risks.
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