TikTok’s parent company is planning to invest in VR
Zhang Yiming, the founder of tech company Bytedance, which owns TikTok, has denied that the group is a ‘national security threat.’ Photo: AFP
Bytdance, TikTok’s parent company, is eagerly exploring its investment options in Virtual reality space. A source revealed that the company was planning to invest ‘tons of money’ to develop VR content.
Protocol noted that the company was actively hiring with 40 job listings posted for Pico, the Chinese VR headset maker that Bytdance acquired last year. Job posts are mosty for locations in California and Washington, including positions like head of VR game strategy, game operation manager, optical engineer and systems design electric engineer.
According to the report, listing for the head of consumer sales in Pico is indicator that the company wants to establish its presence in the US. The Verge believes Bytedance will help Pico compete with mainstream headsets offered by Meta and PlayStation.
Pico’s flagship all-in-one headset, Pico Neo 3 Link, launched in May in Europe and was priced at $472. The specs were observed to be similar to Meta Quest 2 which costed $399. Both devices had similar 256GB storage, 1832 x 1920 resolution per eye and a Snapdragon XR2 chip. The Neo 3 Link had an additional strap and a DisplayPort connection instead of USB-C.