iQIYI’s VR Company Lays Off Over 100 Employees and Owes Wages for Months

Credit: Visual China

BEIJING, Aug 14 (TiPost) —— Several employees from iQIYI-incubated VR hardware company iQIYI Smart have confirmed recently that the company has paid partial salaries based on their different levels starting from March.

Meanwhile, the company carried out several rounds of layoffs and no salaries were meted out in a few months.

iQIYI Smart, formerly known as iQIYI Intelligence, is a virtual reality (VR) hardware brand operated by iQIYI, which was founded in December 2016. The business includes VR technology, product, and content research and development, and, follows the strategy of “hardware + content” like most of the domestic VR companies.

According to the official website, iQIYI Smart is headquartered in Beijing, with regional branches in Nanjing, Shanghai, Deyang, etc. The company launched a variety of VR all-in-one products from March 2017 to January 2023, and the latest product Dream Mix was released in January.

iQIYI responded last Wednesday that “iQIYI Smart is an independently operated company, and please contact the company’s marketing department directly for details.” The company said that it had no information to release last Friday.

iQIYI Smart has experienced several layoffs in the past six months, the proportion of layoffs in many departments was as high as 50%, of which the research and development department was hit the hardest. The laid-off employees totalled more than 100 people, and the company’s remaining employees have fewer than 100 people. And some of the laid-off employee’s compensation has not been issued on time. An employee who was laid off in April said that their severance compensation was issued in batches, “but compensation of three months has not been paid, and compensation in this month has been suspended again.”

At present, the official flagship store of iQIYI Smart on Taobao, Tmall, and Jingdong is also in a state of closure, and all products are off the shelves. An employee in Beijing said that the current staff is questioning the company’s ability to step forward to solve the problem, “and the staff has no ideas about the following steps.”

The company’s CEO is Xiong Wen, who served as strategy director of Lenovo Group, Lenovo’s North American regional marketing director, and General Manager of Lenovo Group’s Digital Home Division. As of press time, iQIYI Smart’s official website still shows Xiong is still the CEO of this company.

Employees of this company confirmed that Bai Peng, vice president of Xiaomi’s To B business, joined iQIYI Smart as CEO in July, and Xiong is no longer in his position. An employee who recently departed said that last time he saw Xiong was at the end of May, and he has not appeared in the company since then.

According to the chat screenshot, in the case of unpaid wages, some employees directly contacted Gong Yu, CEO of iQIYI, through the company’s office system, hoping that he can step in to help solve the problem, but Gong repeatedly emphasized that iQIYI Smart and iQIYI are two independent entities.

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