ByteDance’s VR unit Pico prepares US expansion

ByteDance’s Pico is making moves

TikTok’s corporate parent, ByteDance, is getting ready to enter the U.S. market with another product: The company has started to assemble a team of Pico employees on the West Coast, with a major focus on content licensing as well as marketing its hardware to U.S. consumers.

ByteDance has also been approaching VR content producers, willing to shell out what one source described to me as “tons of money” for VR games and experiences. (ByteDance didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.)

• Pico currently has more than 40 job listings for positions in the Bay Area, Seattle and San Diego.
• Many of the positions the company is looking to fill are related to a content-focused organization called Pico Studios. These include a head of Pico Studios, a head of VR Game Strategy - Pico Studios, a head of Overseas Content Ecosystem - Pico Studios and an operations manager for this organization.
• Pico is also looking to fill a number of technical roles related to VR hardware and software development and R&D.
• At least one position also suggests that this new hiring push isn’t just about bringing U.S. talent on board: A head of Consumer Sales will be “responsible for the sales and marketing of Pico's overall product in the US consumer market,” according to the job description.

Pico was one of a number of Chinese VR startups with a promising product but little if any chance to bring it to Western audiences before ByteDance acquired it in August. It’s just very hard to compete with the Quest 2, especially if you don’t have a Meta-sized checkbook.

• Pico previously had a small team in the U.S. but was primarily focused on enterprise sales outside of China.
• The company introduced its latest headset, the Pico Neo 3 Link, in Europe last month, proclaiming in a tweet: “We have entered the European #VR consumer headset market.”
• ByteDance also recently began moving some of its U.S. employees from TikTok to Pico, including business development executive Sally Wang, who had been working on content partnerships for the social video app.

Since the acquisition, Pico has redoubled efforts to license content for its VR headsets. A source with knowledge of those conversations told me the company was willing to spend “tons of money” on VR content, including library titles that have already been licensed to Meta.

• Pico’s website lists games like Superhot VR, Red Matter, Eleven Table Tennis and Arizona Sunshine — all titles that have been successful on the Quest.

The big question: Is ByteDance willing to match Meta’s hardware prices? IDC recently estimated that Meta sold nearly 15 million Quest 2s since the introduction of the headset in late 2020, which puts it in line with major game consoles

• One of the reasons that the Quest 2 is so successful is its $299 price tag, which is largely due to the fact that Meta has no intentions of making money with VR hardware. Instead the company is betting on the metaverse as its next major growth engine, and sees hardware as a way to get there.
• Pico’s Neo 3 Link sells for 450 euros (about $480) in Europe, which is, well … more than $299.

Still, ByteDance seems to be in it for the long haul, and willing to take on Meta’s immersive computing push on multiple fronts. In addition to VR content and hardware staff, Pico is also looking to hire multiple haptics engineers and a waveguide design scientist — all roles necessary to build the kind of advanced AR and VR hardware Meta has been working on.

— Janko Roettgers

A MESSAGE FROM QUALCOMM

There are three things that companies need to know when it comes to setting climate goals. The first thing I would say is that if you're going to set a climate goal as a business, it needs to be a businesswide effort. It cannot live within just the corporate responsibility or the sustainability team as it often does.

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A MESSAGE FROM QUALCOMM

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