Tao Kong led robotics research at tech giant Bytedance — which owns TikTok — from 2019 until earlier this year. He was the team lead on the company’s GR-3 AI model, which can program robots to complete tasks such as hanging clothes or cleaning up a dinner table.

Bytedance says the model outperforms the “state-of-the-art baseline” developed by U.S. firm Physical Intelligence. Tao is now working on an undisclosed new venture. He holds a doctorate from Tsinghua University.