In the high-stakes world of tech giants, where algorithms shape culture and data builds empires, few executives are as good at combining Eastern strength with Western creativity as Shou Zi Chew. Chew was born on January 1, 1983, in the busy city-state of Singapore. His rise from a humble background to the CEO of TikTok, a platform with over a billion users around the world, reads like a script from a Silicon Valley blockbuster. Chew, a Singaporean businessperson trying to make sense of the difficult relationship between the U.S. and China, has become the unlikely face of one of the most controversial apps in history. In 2025, when he is 42 years old, he will be at the center of debates about free speech, national security, and digital sovereignty. At the same time, he will be leading TikTok through its most difficult year yet.
A Typical Singaporean Beginning
Chew’s early life was typical of middle-class Singaporeans. The island’s strict meritocracy and unending drive for excellence shaped it. His father worked in construction and his mother kept the family’s books. This taught young Shou Zi to value hard work in the hot, high-pressure environment of Singapore in the 1980s. He went to Hwa Chong Institution, one of the best schools in the country, where his sharp mind and discipline stood out. Chew, like every other able-bodied Singaporean man, had to do his National Service in the Singapore Armed Forces. At the Officer Cadet School passing-out ceremony, he became a Second Lieutenant. This was a rite of passage that helped him become a better leader in the tropical sun.
Chew spoke both English and Chinese fluently, and his ability to speak multiple languages would later help him connect with people from all over the world in business. In a 2023 Vogue Singapore interview, he talked about his “wanderlust” as a child growing up on a “small island.” This feeling pushed him to leave Singapore and travel the world. He looks up to Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, and says that the leader’s vision of practical government is a lifelong role model for him. This mix of discipline, flexibility, and drive set the stage for a career that would take him around the world.
Early Goals and Academic Foundations
Chew went to the UK to study economics and got his Bachelor of Science from University College London in 2006. The program’s intense focus on global markets made him love finance, which led him straight to Goldman Sachs in London. As an investment banker from 2006 to 2008, he learned the ropes by working on big-money deals and expertly navigating the boom before the financial crisis. Chew first saw how tech investments could change his life here, making connections that would shape his future.
Chew moved to the U.S. in 2010 to get his Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, even though the stock market crashed in 2008. He worked as an intern at Facebook, a small startup that was still years away from its 2012 IPO, in the famous halls of Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It was crazy, exciting, and full of potential,” Chew said later, which is very different from how big it got. He also met Vivian Kao, a Taiwanese-American classmate, at Harvard. Their relationship, which started over email in 2008, grew into marriage, and now they have two kids together. Chew’s family is still his anchor, even though they now live in Singapore. Vivian is the CEO of an investment firm, and they balance their busy lives with quiet family time.
Finding Your Way Through Tech’s Big Players
After Harvard, Chew worked as a partner at DST Global, a venture capital firm started by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, from 2010 to 2015. This wasn’t just a job; it was a front-row seat to the tech revolution. Chew led investments in big companies like JD.com, Alibaba, and Xiaomi, but his biggest move was leading DST’s early 2013 bet on ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok. ByteDance was started by Chinese engineers Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo. At the time, it was a new news aggregator. Chew’s team saw how smart its algorithms were and gave it money, which helped it become a global powerhouse.
In 2015, Chew left to work for Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone company that competes with Apple and Samsung. As CFO, he was in charge of the company’s huge IPO in Hong Kong in 2018, which made it worth $54 billion and made Xiaomi the third-largest smartphone maker in the world. By 2019, he had risen to the position of President of International Business, which helped Xiaomi grow in Southeast Asia and beyond. These jobs helped him get better at scaling tech in regulated markets, a skill that would come in handy later.
The TikTok Throne: Leading in the Middle of Firestorms
In March 2021, Chew quickly returned to ByteDance as CFO. In May, he became the CEO of TikTok, taking over from Kevin Mayer, who had only been in charge for a short time. TikTok grew to over a billion users while he was in charge, and it became a cultural force for Gen Z creativity, with everything from viral dances to e-commerce booms. But Chew’s time in office has been more about geopolitics than numbers. As U.S. lawmakers were worried that TikTok’s Chinese ownership would give Beijing access to user data, Chew became the platform’s main defender.
His big break came in March 2023, when he spoke in front of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. When asked about his ties to China and privacy, the calm Singaporean kept saying, “I’m Singaporean,” to distance himself from Beijing. The conversation with Senator Tom Cotton, in which he confused Singapore with India, sparked accusations of racism and went viral, getting millions of views. During a follow-up Senate hearing in January 2024 on child safety, Chew promised better protections, but not without controversy. Senator Marco Rubio called for a perjury investigation into the claims of inconsistencies.
In 2024, the stakes got higher when President Joe Biden signed a law that said TikTok had to sell its stake in ByteDance or be banned in the U.S. After the election, the app was taken off the market and turned off on January 19, 2025. But on January 20, the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he used an executive order to delay it. Chew, who sat in a place of honor at the ceremony, represented TikTok’s shaky peace with Washington. Trump pushed back the deadline by another 90 days on June 19, 2025, giving him more time to talk about the sale. Chew has moved data to Singapore servers to stress independence, even though there are rumors of bids from Oracle or Microsoft.
Chew’s profile shines off the Hill: In 2024, he co-chaired the Met Gala with TikTok as the main sponsor and met a lot of famous people. Gold House called him one of the most important Asians of 2024 because of how much he affects culture. He started his personal TikTok account (@shou.time) in 2022 and posts videos of family hikes and golf swings. This makes the CEO behind the algorithm seem more like a real person.
Is Legacy in the Balance a Bridge or a Battleground?
Shou Zi Chew’s story is one of an unlikely rise: a Singaporean kid who became a global tech giant and can speak fluently in boardrooms from London to Los Angeles. He has a net worth of about $200 million from investments and his salary, so he’s not new to being rich. But his “normal” roots make him easy to relate to. But critics paint a darker picture: Recent X posts in September 2025 brought up unproven claims of ties to the Chinese Communist Party, which is similar to what people said during the 2023 hearing. Chew has strongly denied these, but they show how closely people are watching him.
As TikTok’s future hangs in the balance—maybe it will be sold, banned, or come back to life—Chew stays its loyal captain. His Singaporean pragmatism might be the key to survival in a world where apps affect elections and economies. One thing is clear: Shou Zi Chew has already changed the game for what a business leader in the 21st century should look like, one viral video at a time.
