The head of TikTok's Chinese sister app Douyin is leaving his position to take up another role within parent company ByteDance.
Following previous reports in Chinese media, Kelly Zhang will step down as chief executive officer of Douyin Group, a ByteDance spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday. ByteDance will not seek to appoint a successor and Zhang will focus on his video editing app CapCut, said the people, who asked not to be named because the plans are private.
ByteDance, which operates short video platforms TikTok and Douyin, needs to have a sense of crisis and avoid complacency, CEO Liang Rubo told staff at a company-wide meeting in January. He said there are some organizational issues that need to be addressed and lamented that ByteDance is lagging behind in the artificial intelligence race started by OpenAI's ChatGPT.
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Zhang joined ByteDance in 2014 and became CEO of Douyin Group in 2020, making her one of the few women to hold a leadership position at China's largest tech company. In that role, she oversaw ByteDance's products and operations in China, including Douyin and news aggregator Toutiao.
In a social media post seen by Bloomberg, Zhang said, “I'm excited to work with CapCut team members to create our own dreams, grow in this AI era, and draw our fantasy worlds together.” ” he said. “I will use this entrepreneurial spirit to spend the next 10 years working hard on what I am passionate about.”
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