Ma Wei-Ying, still at present the AI research head, joined Bytedance from Microsoft to become a vice president and head of the AI lab in 2017.
He has led his researchers to conduct fundamental research and develop new technologies in areas including machine learning, natural language computing, visual computing, search, knowledge engineering, and human-computer interaction.
His departure comes as TikTok faces regulatory issues across the globe, majorly in India and other countries that declared a nationwide ban, and an impending ban by the US government over suspicions Beijing could force its Chinese owner to turn over user information.
A ByteDance spokeswoman said, “We are extremely grateful to Wei-Ying for his important contribution to ByteDance.”
According to a familiar source with the matter, Ma will leave ByteDance this week. It is unclear who would replace him. Ma did not make an immediate response in a request to comment.
According to his Linkedin profile, Ma was trained in Taiwan and the United States, and assistant managing director of Microsoft Research Asia prior to taking the post at ByteDance.
Technology news website The Information first reported Ma’s departure and said he planned to take a position at China’s Tsinghua University.

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Reuters has reported that ByteDance is expanding its engineering and research team in Mountain View, California, and had hired more than 150 engineers there.