Pico company owned by TikTok ByteDance announced reduction of staff
2023.02.17 02:14
Pico company owned by TikTok ByteDance announced reduction of staff
By Tiffany Smith
Budrigannews.com – After local media reported the beginning of hundreds of redundancies earlier this week, Pico, a virtual reality (VR) headset manufacturer owned by TikTok’s Chinese developer ByteDance, announced on Friday that it would be laying off a small number of employees.
Unidentified sources told the South China Morning Post on Thursday that Pico had reduced some teams by as much as 30%.
A Pico spokesperson stated in a statement, “While we continue to hire as a global business, we are streamlining our team and, as a result, parting ways with a small number of colleagues.”
“We are working closely with those impacted to support them through this time of change, and we greatly appreciate the contributions of these colleagues.”
According to a person with knowledge of the situation, more than 200 employees were affected.
ByteDance bought Pico in 2021, putting the tech giant in competition with the U.S. social media company Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:) in a deal widely interpreted as a wager on the metaverse concept of virtual worlds. which manufactures its own VR hardware.
ByteDance, like many of its Chinese tech peers, has been reorganizing and cutting jobs since last year as economic growth slows. The layoffs are the latest step in that process of streamlining.
Tencent Holdings (OTC:) on Thursday After local media reported that the Chinese gaming and social media giant was laying off employees in its newly established “extended reality” (XR) business, Ltd stated that it would be making some personnel adjustments.
