At the 5th ByteDance Scholarship Award Ceremony, Yang Zhenyuan, Vice
President of Technology at ByteDance, congratulated the winning students and shared the
company’s recent technological explorations. He also revealed that ByteDance will release
new products in 2026.
According to Yang, PICO’s next-generation device will be equipped with a fully self-
developed, end-to-end chip designed specifically for XR headsets. The project was initiated in
June 2022, completed tape-out in 2024, and has now entered mass production, with all
indicators meeting design expectations. The new device will see improvements across key
areas such as display quality, computing performance, and latency control.
Beyond the self-developed chip, the new headset will also feature a major display upgrade.
PICO will adopt a custom MicroOLED panel co-developed with its supply chain partners. The
screen reaches a PPI close to 4000—nearly nine times that of the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Average PPD reaches 40, exceeding 45 in the center area, delivering a multiple-fold
improvement over PICO 3.
Yang also shared that after ByteDance acquired PICO, the team pursued two product
strategies in parallel:
1. continue improving the current product line while investing heavily in content such as
video and livestreaming, supported by aggressive marketing;
2. invest in foundational technologies to push core user experience to a significantly
higher level.
In 2023, ByteDance decided to reduce spending on content and marketing and shift more
firmly toward the technology-driven route. At that time, the hardware experience wasn’t
mature enough to support large-scale consumer expansion. This shift caused some
misunderstandings externally, with many believing ByteDance was scaling back its XR efforts.
In fact, it was the opposite—starting from 2023, the company increased its technical
investment in XR more than ever before.
