Shou Zi Chew’s career trajectory is nothing short of remarkable. Today, he stands at the helm of TikTok as its CEO, guiding the app through its meteoric rise in global popularity. But before leading the viral video platform, Chew’s career began in a surprising place – as an intern at Facebook, the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg.
The journey of a tech leader who took on his former employer
According to an article in Finance Yahoo, Chew’s path to the tech world began in Singapore. He earned an economics degree from University College London, followed by an MBA from Harvard Business School. It was during his time at Harvard that Chew’s journey in Silicon Valley took its first step. As a summer intern, he worked at Facebook, the social media giant that was just beginning to define the digital age.
In an interview with Harvard’s alumni website, Chew reminisced about his experience at Facebook, a company that was at the time growing rapidly but was still under the radar compared to today’s scale.
After his internship, Chew launched his tech career at Facebook’s headquarters in California, but soon found himself moving across the globe—working in London, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Eventually, Chew settled in Beijing, where he joined Xiaomi in 2015, serving as the company’s CFO. Under his financial stewardship, Xiaomi went public in 2018, marking a key milestone in his career.
From competing with Zuckerberg to leading TikTok
Chew’s move to ByteDance in 2021 marked the next phase of his evolution within the tech industry, and in many ways, it brought him face-to-face with his former employer, Facebook. Initially joining ByteDance as CFO, Chew was quickly promoted to CEO of TikTok later that same year, overseeing the short-form video platform’s immense growth. In doing so, he became one of the rare tech leaders to rise to prominence at a company not controlled by Mark Zuckerberg.
Today, TikTok has over 1 billion global users, with around 150 million of those based in the US. Despite not being under Zuckerberg’s control, TikTok’s success has made it a direct competitor to Meta’s own social media empire.
Interestingly, Zuckerberg had his eyes on a piece of what would become TikTok years before Chew ever joined ByteDance. In 2016, Zuckerberg reportedly tried to acquire Musical.ly, a popular lip-syncing app, but lost out to ByteDance, which purchased the app for $800 million in 2017. ByteDance then merged Musical.ly with TikTok, creating the powerhouse app we know today.
In response, Meta launched its own TikTok competitor, Lasso, in 2018. However, the app failed to gain traction and was shut down in 2020. As TikTok continued to expand, Meta’s efforts to replicate its success were deemed unsuccessful, leading Zuckerberg to take a more combative approach.
As TikTok faced increasing scrutiny from US lawmakers, often centred around national security concerns, Zuckerberg’s criticisms of the app became sharper. In a 2020 internal meeting, Zuckerberg acknowledged the risks associated with TikTok, suggesting that its Chinese ownership could pose a threat to global free expression online, while also sympathizing with concerns about user data security. The battle between Meta and TikTok took a personal turn, especially when TikTok’s rise was seen as a direct challenge to Zuckerberg’s social media empire.
In contrast, Chew has been resolute in defending TikTok. During a 2023 congressional hearing, he aimed for Facebook’s data privacy record, referencing the notorious Cambridge Analytica scandal, and asserted that TikTok’s data collection practices were no more invasive than those of American tech giants. He famously argued, “I don’t think ownership is the issue here. American social companies don’t have a good track record with data privacy and user security.”
As Chew continues to lead TikTok, his journey from Facebook intern to the face of a rising social media giant is proof of how swiftly the tech world evolves—and how the lines between competition and camaraderie can blur in this high-stakes industry.