TikTok mother or father firm ByteDance is reportedly shedding what South China Morning Submit maintains will likely be “lots of of workers” working at its VR headset manufacturing subsidiary, Pico Interactive. A separate report from Reuters additionally maintains Chinese language tech big Tencent is scrapping its plans to launch a VR headset.
Based on two folks with data of the Pico layoffs, a considerable portion of the VR headset maker is anticipated to be affected. The report maintains that some groups will see as a lot as a 30 % discount, whereas some higher-level positions are additionally anticipated to be affected.
After being acquired by ByteDance in August 2021, Pico job postings revealed the corporate was making a large enlargement into the US to presumably higher compete with Meta on its dwelling turf.
Shortly afterwards, the China-based firm then launched its newest standalone headset, Pico 4, in Europe and Asia to customers. Seen a direct competitor to Meta Quest 2, Pico 4 nonetheless isn’t formally bought within the US; the headset is at present solely out there throughout Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and most international locations in Europe.
It was additionally reported by Chinese language tech outlet 36Kr that Tencent, the large Chinese language multinational, was disbanding it 300-person robust XR unit. The corporate has since refuted this declare with Reuters, stating as a substitute it will likely be making changes to some enterprise groups as improvement plans for XR {hardware} had modified.
Citing sources aware of the restructuring, Reuters reviews that Tencent is abandoning plans to launch a VR headset attributable to a sobering financial outlook.
This follows a widening pattern of layoffs which have affected practically each large title in tech, together with Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. Microsoft just lately introduced it was shuttering its social VR platform AltspaceVR along with its XR interface framework, Combined Actuality Toolkit. In the meantime, Microsoft has additionally had bother fulfilling its finish of a US protection contract which makes use of its HoloLens AR headset as the idea of a tactical AR headset.
It was additionally revealed late final yr that Meta was planning to chop discretionary spending and prolong its hiring freeze by way of the primary quarter, alongside a layoff which affected practically 11,000 workers, or round 13 % of its general workforce.