The tech icon will take over as the team's VP of virtual reality, steering the project in new directions.
Ever since announcing his departure from Xiaomi a few days ago, the tech industry has been furiously debating what new Silicon Valley venture ex-Global Vice President Hugo Barra would be joining. Now, it appears the budget smartphone icon is joining the Facebook team.
Both Mark Zuckerberg and Barra himself posted on Facebook early Thursday morning, announcing that the unofficial face of Xiaomi would be joining the social media giant’s virtual reality team. Barra will be joining the Facebook family as the new Vice President of Virtual Reality for the Oculus VR team. “Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun always says that the highest calling of an engineer is to make technology breakthroughs quickly and readily available to the widest possible spectrum of humanity,” Barra said in his Facebook post. “That will be my mission at Facebook and I look forward to building the future of immersive technology.”
Both Zuckerberg and Barra’s Facebook posts included a photo of the two, meeting in virtual reality space designed to look like the Facebook office. Barra is still in China, wrapping up formalities with Xiaomi, and is likely to take a short vacation before officially joining the new team. “I've known Hugo for a long time, starting when he helped develop the Android operating system, to the last few years he's worked at Xiaomi in Beijing bringing innovative devices to millions of people,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform. They'll enable us to experience completely new things and be more creative than ever before. Hugo is going to help build that future, and I'm looking forward to having him on our team.”
The appointment comes close on the heels of former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe stepping down from the role, in order to focus on PC projects. The addition of Barra to the team shows Facebook isn’t content with just VR videos on their platform, they want to develop the technology for more applications in entertainment and user interaction.
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 "virtual reality (VR), Hugo Barra, Mark Zuckerberg, Xiaomi, Facebook, Oculus VR, Brendan Iribe")
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