36Kr reported on October 30 that Wen Shilei completed resignation procedures at ByteDance in October and was expected to join robotics company Octopus Dynamics as a partner. The report placed his departure after two other leaders of ByteDance’s commercial generative AI unit left in July.
Three reported departures
36Kr reported the following departures, roles and next steps for the unit’s three leaders:
| Person | Reported ByteDance role | Reported departure | Reported next step |
| Peng Bingyue | Head of the commercial GenAI department | July 2026 | Later joined Google |
| Yuan Zehuan | Head of the commercial GenAI unit’s China region | July 2026 | Left to start a business focused on world models |
| Wen Shilei | Head of commercial GenAI research and development | October 2026 | Expected to join Octopus Dynamics as a partner |
The unit’s work and reported status
36Kr described the team’s work as applying generative AI to advertising delivery and intelligent marketing. It also reported that the remaining members moved to other departments and that the independent unit effectively ended.
A separate cloud go-to-market reorganization
36Kr reported that ByteDance began a separate organizational adjustment on July 30, 2026, combining the go-to-market (GTM) teams of Feishu and Volcano Engine into a business-to-business organization for cloud services. The combined team was assigned marketing, sales and customer service for services including model-as-a-service (MaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS).
A separate Reuters report, republished by HT Tech on July 28, 2020, said Wei-Ying Ma, then head of ByteDance’s AI lab, was expected to leave that week. Ma’s AI-lab leadership role was distinct from the commercial GenAI unit’s leadership discussed here.
