Pico Interactive

In November 2023, ByteDance-owned VR company Pico Interactive laid off a significant portion of its workforce as part of a business restructuring. Reports from Tencent Technology indicated the layoffs could affect over a thousand employees, reducing the staff from a peak of around 2,000 to just "hundreds." While ByteDance confirmed layoffs but disputed the scale, the move was driven by slower-than-expected growth in the VR industry, which Pico's CEO described as still in a very early stage. The company will now focus more on hardware and core technologies, with most of its software team being folded back into ByteDance. This restructuring reflects the challenges in the competitive VR hardware market, where Pico operates as a subsidiary of the Chinese tech giant behind TikTok.

Pico Interactive laid off 400 employees representing approximately 20% of its workforce on 2023-02-16.