ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming will step down as chief executive of the group behind popular video app TikTok, reported the Financial Times.
Zhang, 38, founded ByteDance almost a decade ago, pushing the Beijing-based group to spin out a slew of hit apps including TikTok and sister Chinese platform Douyin. He also steered the company through a period of US-China tensions.
ByteDance said Zhang would step down as chief executive at the end of the year, and would be replaced by co-founder and head of human resources Liang Rubo.
“Since the beginning of this year, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to better drive real long-term breakthroughs, which cannot simply rely on steady, but incremental, progress,” Zhang wrote in a company blog post. Zhang said he would remain at the company full-time, but will work on “longer-term initiatives” and help “drive innovation, by drawing on my strengths of highly-focused learning.”