Cao Dapeng, former head of PopAI at 01.AI, has been named mobile product leader for ByteDance’s AI-generated video platform Jimeng, Chinese media outlet LatePost reported Thursday. He will report to CapCut head Zhang Nan.
Why it matters: ByteDance aims to build an AI-driven version of Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) within the next decade, making Jimeng’s development a key part of its long-term strategy to dominate the AI content creation landscape.
Details: Before joining 01. AI, Cao Dapeng had worked at Feishu (Lark), a ByteDance subsidiary, as a product head, a position he took up in 2021. ByteDance is known for hiring individuals with entrepreneurial backgrounds, and Cao fits this profile. Between 2013 and 2017, he co-founded the image-based social community app Nice.
- ByteDance’s Feishu, a workplace collaboration app similar to Slack or Teams, has already integrated DeepSeek.
Context: Jimeng, which launched under CapCut in May 2024, offers AI image generation, smart canvas, and video creation tools.
- Jimeng’s user base has grown rapidly, particularly following the explosive popularity of DeepSeek. The demand overflow from DeepSeek has introduced new interactive use cases, such as generating detailed video scripts via DeepSeek and then using Jimeng for video creation. According to third-party analytics firm QuestMobile, Jimeng’s weekly active users surged from around 760,000 in late December 2024 to nearly 2 million by mid-February 2025—almost a threefold increase in just one and a half months.
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