Facebook Inc. has hired former Google and Xiaomi exec Hugo Barra to lead their virtual reality efforts, including the Oculus subsidiary. For those who’ve not been following tech news lately, it’s only three days ago that Hugo Barra said he would be resigning from the Global Vice President position of Xiaomi, to re-unite with his friends and family at Silicon Valley and to take some time off before “embarking on a new adventure”.
Trust me, no one must have seen this coming. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg, today announced that he is excited to work with Barra who is known for bringing innovative ideas to millions of people, also citing his remarkable contributions to Google and Xiaomi.
“I’m excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team. Hugo’s in China right now, so here we are together in VR. It seems fitting.
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.
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.”, Zuckerberg said via his Facebook page.
Along with the post, Zuckerberg also attached a picture of the two – Hugo Barra in China and Mark Zuckerberg in California meeting each other in virtual reality, thus implicating the infinite applications of VR in the future. Check out the picture below.
As a welcome note, Hugo Barra said he is excited to work at Facebook as VP of virtual reality (VPVR) and lead the Oculus team. He also added that he aims to make VR a mainstream technology.
“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. That will be my mission at Facebook and I look forward to building the future of immersive technology with Mark Zuckerberg, Brendan Trexler Iribe, Mike Schroepfer, and the visionaries in the Oculus team.”, said Barra via his Facebook page.
Barra has worked nearly three and half years at Xiaomi, where he was in charge of extending the company products to India and Southeast Asia. With his contributions, the company enjoyed some success, but overall, the sales declined during his tenure. This could be the reason he decided to quit the company, in favor of a job at Facebook. Also, the Chinese company has announced that senior Vice President Xiang Wang will now take the position of Barra as the Global VP of the company.
For those who didn’t know, Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014 for a whopping 2 billion dollars. Former Oculus CEO, Brendan Iribe said he was stepping down the position to concentrate more on Oculus’ newly established internal PC VR division. According to CNBC, users are expected to spend more than 11 billion dollars in virtual reality over the next few years.
Share your thoughts on the article in the comments below.
