A decade ago, Shou Zi Chew was just another ambitious student trying to make his mark in the tech industry. He landed a summer internship at a promising social media company—Facebook—during his MBA at Harvard Business School. Little did Mark Zuckerberg know, the intern he hired would one day become the CEO of his fiercest competitor: TikTok.
A Global Career Path
Chew is a Singapore-born who, after his time in Silicon Valley, travelled many miles. He spent a year at Facebook but then went to London, Singapore and Hong Kong before coming to Beijing. In 2015, he joined Chinese technology giant Xiaomi as its Chief Financial Officer, contributing to the success of taking it public in 2018. His experience across global markets and finance was very well-suited for his next big leap.
The TikTok Takeover
In 2021 Chew joined ByteDance, the mother company of TikTok, and began his tenure as a Chief Financial Officer. However, at the end of that year, he became TikTok’s CEO directly in contention with Zuckerberg’s Meta Empire.
However, its journey to remarkable success wasn’t exactly certain; Mark Zuckerberg once attempted to influence its direction. In 2016, Meta, at the time known as Facebook, sought to acquire Musical.ly, an app through which many American teens lip-synced their way into each other’s lives. Instead, ByteDance snapped it up in 2017 for $800 million and later integrated it into TikTok, propelling it into the pinnacle of social media.
Meta’s Failing Counterattack
Meta responded with the launch of its own TikTok rival, Lasso, in 2018; it failed and was shut down in 2020. It wasn’t even able to reproduce such success through Instagram in the form of short-form videos (Reels) or even on Facebook.
The Battle Continues
As U.S. lawmakers consider TikTok bans as a national security measure, its most prominent critics include Zuckerberg himself. He recently expressed concerns about the ties with China and suggested that it risked compromising data and free speech. However, Chew stands strong, arguing against the claims concerning the operations and place of the platform in global tech.
Read More: Perplexity AI Proposes TikTok Merger
The Future of TikTok and Chew’s Leadership
From intern to industry disruptor, Shou Zi Chew’s journey highlights how quickly power shifts in the tech world. The battle between TikTok and Meta is far from over, and Chew is proving to be a formidable opponent.
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