Douyin Will not Name New CEO as Former Head to Focus on AI-Powered Video Edi...

BEIJING, February 15 (TMTPost)-- Douyin Group, TikTok’s Chinese version owned by ByteDance Ltd., is witnessing a management reshuffle.

Credit：ByteDance

As various businesses become more mature, Douyin has no plan to name a new chief executive officer, or CEO, after Kelly Zhang Nan stepped down recently, people close to ByteDance told TMTPost App. The people said Douyin group will be managed by leaders of Douyin and different businesses related to the short video platform, including Han Shangyou, business leader of Douyin, Zhang Chao, head of news aggregator Jinri Toutiao and mobile reading app Fanqie Novel, Wei Wenwen, president of Douyin E-commerce, Pu Yyanzi, leader of Douyin Life Service, and Zhao Xiuying, who takes charge of Douyin’s advertising business. Han, as Douyin’s president, will coordinate all major businesses related to Douyin, according to the people.

Zhang Nan announced on February 7 that she has resigned as Douyin CEO and will be joining the team of CapCut to help grow the all-in-one video editor and graphic design tool under ByteDance in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo that day expressed his gratitude for Zhang’s long-term contributions to leading China’s information platform business and looks forward to her continued contributions in her new position. It is said that Zhang will continue to report to Liang.

Zhang had developed a photo community app before Her company was acquired by ByteDance. She joined ByteDance with her team in 2014 and became one of the founders of Douyin and saw Douyin growing stronger from ground up. In 2020, Zhang was appointed as Douyin’s first female CEO and the CEO of ByteDance China, fully responsible for Douyin, Volcano Engine, market brands, among other businesses.

Zhang’s focus on the AI-powered development of CapCut is not a surprise. Over the past year, Zhang has channeled the majority of her energy to CapCut-related business and personally led the team to seek breakthroughs in AI-assisted creation, a person close to CapCut revealed to TMTPost. The person added Zhang is about to launch a product that generates images and videos with AI.

CapCut-related products have developed rapidly in the past three years. As of 2021, the monthly active users of CapCut have exceeded 100 million, making it the largest mobile video editing app in China. "AI technology will substantially disrupt content creation and even give birth to new content creation platforms," Liang wrote in an internal letter that responded to Zhang’s exit. "We hope to actively explore, fully understand and seize the opportunity."

In an internal letter seen by TMTPost , Zhang said that she has been more involved in CapCut-related business and strategic discussions since 2023 and was ready for being all-in for a long time. "But when this moment actually came, I feel really excited," Zhang said. The Douyin veteran believes that AI image generation technology is providing huge changes and possibilities to the content creation tool industry.

Zhang’s resignation came a week after Liang called for return to entrepreneurial spirit as ByteDance has fallen behind in the latest AI race ignited by OpenAI’s popular chatbot ChatGPT. “We are not sensitive enough to external changes,” Liang said the ByteDance annual all-hands meeting for 2024 on January 30. “During our semi-annual technical review, discussions related to GPT did not emerge until 2023, despite GPT-1 being released in 2018.” Liang urged employees to reinforce a sense of crisis as a goal of the coming year. The chief executive also asked staff to keep away from mediocrity since the biggest crisis ByteDance faces is the risk of becoming mediocre as an organization, unable to achieve new breakthroughs. Furthermore, he cited feedback from many people that ByteDance now has "all the typical problems of a large company." To address these issues, Liang believes it is necessary to steer clear from complacency, raise the bar, and build an efficient organization.