Zhang Yiming said he first discussed stepping down as chief executive of ByteDance “with a small group” in March, but investors in the $200bn start-up said they were caught by surprise.
After a tumultuous year, the 38-year-old founder announced he was handing over his CEO duties in a resignation letter to staff on Thursday, even though his company is preparing for an initial public offering.
While he claimed in his letter that he was not so interested in “actually managing people”, Zhang had in fact been the sole manager of ByteDance’s top leadership, and had built the company, which owns the viral video app TikTok, into a global challenger to Facebook and Tencent.
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