Facebook’s virtual reality team to be led by Hugo Barra

The former Xiaomi global vice-president will bring his expertise in hardware manufacturing and distribution along with his software background.
Former Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra. (File photo | Reuters)
Former Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra. (File photo | Reuters)

BENGALURU: Hugo Barra, who resigned as Xiaomi’s global vice-president three days ago, announced on Thursday that he will join Facebook as its vice-president of virtual reality, heading the department.  
Barra will bring his expertise in hardware manufacturing and distribution along with his software background.

Before joining Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, he was Google’s vice-president for product management for android. “I’m excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team,” Facebook  CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. 

Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus, had stepped down last month to run another division and the position had been lying vacant since then. “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,” Zuckerberg pointed out. 

Barra also stated that it had been his dream to work in virtual reality “even back when AR/VR were just figments of science fiction”.

“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..,” Barra stated. 

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