ByteDance Restructures Lark Office Tool Into AI Division

On Thursday, the South China Morning Post reported that ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok based in Beijing, has restructured its office tool Lark, known as Feishu in China. This reorganization involves merging Lark's product team with the Doubao AI chatbot division, which will now be under the leadership of Zhao Qi, the former head of Doubao. Lark's CEO, David Xie Xin, will now report to Zhao. Furthermore, Lark's sales, marketing, and customer service teams will join forces with a group from ByteDance's cloud division, Volcano Engine, forming a new department dedicated to sales and customer service for model-as-a-service and software-as-a-service solutions. Tan Dai, the president of Volcano Engine, will oversee this new team. Additionally, Lark's development and infrastructure team will integrate into Flow, a division centered on AI applications. ByteDance indicated that these changes are intended to enhance "stronger AI product competitiveness and customer service capabilities." The company anticipates an annual AI revenue of US$4 billion, the highest publicly reported among its Chinese competitors, although still trailing behind US AI companies.