Shou Zi Chew was born in Singapore in 1983, trained at University College London and Harvard Business School and built his early career at Goldman Sachs and DST Global, where he was among the first investors in ByteDance. He later served as chief financial officer of Xiaomi before joining ByteDance and being named chief executive of TikTok in 2021.
Under his leadership TikTok has scaled to more than a billion monthly active users, redefined the format conventions of short-form video and built a commerce business — TikTok Shop — that has rapidly become a structural force in markets from Indonesia to the United Kingdom. He has also been the public face of the platform during sustained regulatory pressure in Washington, Brussels, New Delhi and London.
Chew is known for a methodical, evidence-driven public posture, exemplified by his extended congressional appearances, in which he has consistently framed TikTok's challenges as solvable through transparency commitments rather than divestiture.