ByteDance (BDNCE) said that Kelly Zhang is stepping down as Douyin Group’s CEO and will take up a new role at ByteDance’s video editing app, Reuters reported.
Zhang made the announcement on her personal social media account on WeChat that she was resigning from Douyin — a sister app of TikTok, is a short video platform available in China — which was confirmed by ByteDance, the report added.
Han Shangyou, who previously reported to Kelly Zhang, will continue to run day-to-day operations at Douyin and report to ByteDance China Chairman Zhang Lidong, according to a report from Bloomberg News.
Zhang added she is joining ByteDance’s video editing app Jianying but did not disclose her role at the unit. She plans to support the growth of the product in the age of artificial intelligence.
In January, Liang informed its employees in a meeting that there were several organizational issues which were required to be addressed and worried that ByteDance was lagging behind in the artificial intelligence arena.
“AI technology will greatly disrupt content creation and even lead to new creative tools. We hope to actively explore, fully understand and seize the opportunities,” Liang said in a memo to employees annoucing Zhang’s move, the report noted.
Jianying is the Chinese counterpart to ByteDance’s other editing app CapCut. In September, CapCut became ByteDance’s second app to exceed $100M in total consumer spending after having over 490 million users, according to research firm Data.ai.
Zhang has worked at ByteDance for 10 years and reported to ByteDance’s CEO Liang Rubo. Besides Douyin app, Zhang oversaw ByteDance’s flagship news aggregator app Toutiao in her previous role.
Zhang founded photo-sharing app Tuba, which was acquired by ByteDance in 2014.
