ByteDance Appoints Li Xiaokai to Head Pico
ByteDance has appointed Li Xiaokai to lead its extended reality (XR) business, according to 36Kr. Li has assumed full responsibility for the business following the departure of Pico founder Henry Zhou, who is leaving the company to pursue other career opportunities after leading Pico for more than a decade.
The leadership change does not alter Pico’s existing strategy, research and development activities, or product roadmap, people familiar with the matter said. The company is continuing preparations to introduce a new mixed reality (MR) headset later this year.
The leadership transition follows more than 11 years under Zhou, who established Pico and guided its growth. The company has informed employees of his departure internally and acknowledged his long-term contribution to the business.
Li has worked in consumer electronics and hardware development for several years. Since joining Pico in 2021, he has overseen the company’s principal products and technology programmes. His responsibilities have included leading teams developing MR products and future technologies.
A ByteDance insider said the company remains to regard XR as a long-term strategic priority and will maintain support for Pico’s technology research and product development.
Li received a bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University before completing a doctorate at Yale University.
Li joined ByteDance while preparations were underway for the acquisition of Pico. During that period, he coordinated work between the two companies and supported recruitment across Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
ByteDance completed its acquisition of Pico in August 2021. Following the transaction, Li moved into the Pico organisation, where his role expanded to cover the development of the company’s core products and underlying technologies.
Before establishing Pico, Zhou spent nearly ten years at Goertek, serving as a vice-president. In 2015, he founded Pico with former Goertek employees, concentrating on standalone virtual reality (VR) headsets.
Goertek remained a long-term supply chain partner after Pico was established. Pico had already introduced products including the Pico Neo series before becoming part of ByteDance. After the acquisition, Zhou remained in charge and supervised the launches of the Pico Neo 3, Pico 4 and Pico 4 Ultra.
Li now holds responsibility for Pico’s future hardware roadmap as the company approaches the release cycle for its next MR device. The Pico 4 Ultra was the final major hardware product launched during Zhou’s leadership.
Pico outlined the next stage of its hardware plans in March with the introduction of Pico OS 6, its latest operating system, and the first preview of its forthcoming flagship MR headset. The device, known internally as Project Swan, is reportedly scheduled for release later this year.
According to publicly available information, Project Swan will feature a micro OLED display solution and an MR chip designed by Pico. The headset is expected to achieve an average angular resolution of about 40 pixels per degree, while the central viewing area is expected to exceed 45 pixels per degree.
Pico said its proprietary chip is intended to process real-time sensing, spatial computing and imaging tasks while reducing system perception latency to as little as 12 milliseconds. Project Swan will also use a dual-chip design, with a separate main processor carrying out general computing and image rendering.
Pico OS 6 expands the company’s focus past conventional VR experiences by expanding support for spatial computing. According to Pico, the operating system allows Android applications, web browsers and 3D content to operate simultaneously within a spatial environment.
The company has additionally introduced a desktop simulator that enables developers to debug selected spatial applications without using a headset.
Based on the announced specifications, Project Swan is positioned closer to premium MR devices such as Apple’s Vision Pro and Samsung’s Galaxy XR than to traditional VR headsets. The device reflects Pico’s turn towards multitasking, productivity, spatial applications and immersive content.
The same direction has been evident in ByteDance’s approach to Pico during the past three years, fortifying the company’s shift toward MR and spatial computing.
In November last year, ByteDance vice-president of technology Yang Zhenyuan described the company’s two-part product strategy during ByteDance’s fifth scholarship awards ceremony. He identified XR as a technology able to support the next stage of human-computer interaction.
Yang said ByteDance at first pursued two parallel approaches after acquiring Pico. One centred on investment in content, live streaming and marketing for the existing product range. The other concentrated on foundational technologies intended to improve the user experience.
He said the company reduced its marketing budget in 2023 and redirected additional resources toward refining products and advancing technology and user experience. He also said that change had led some observers to believe ByteDance had reduced its pledge to XR.
Yang said Pico began developing its own XR chip in 2022. The chip completed tape-out in 2024 and has since entered mass production. During the same period, the company also advanced work on micro OLED displays, microlenses, gesture recognition and spatial perception technologies.
