Chinese social media unicorn ByteDance is assigning three members of senior management from its short video unit to its VR subsidiary Pico Interactive, a start-up that ByteDance purchased last year, reports the South China Morning Post. Song Binghua and Wu Zuomin, currently in charge of entertainment content at short video service Douyin, TikTok’s China version, as well as Ren Lifeng, who co-created Douyin and then headed ByteDance’s Xigua Video app, will join Pico soon, according to people familiar with the matter.
The news is another boost for the VR unit after it announced earlier this week a partnership with chip giant Qualcomm to develop future Pico devices on Snapdragon Spaces, Qualcomm’s developer program for apps to adapt to extended reality (XR).
ByteDance has been expanding the Pico team, which has grown to more than 300 employees from 200 in September last year, Chinese media title LatePost recently reported. Founded in 2015, Pico has grown so fast that it topped the China VR market with a share of more than 50% in the second quarter, according to market research firm IDC.