Hugo Barra left Xiaomi to run VR at Facebook

Just two days ago, top Xiaomi executive and former Googler Hugo Barra announced he was leaving China-based Xiaomi to return to Silicon Valley.

And by “Silicon Valley,” he meant Facebook. 

In a post on Facebook, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced that Barra will joining Facebook as a VP of VR. “Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Hugo's in China right now, so here we are together in VR. It seems fitting.”

The succinct post was accompanied by a digital rendering of the two executives, possibly captured by Oculus’s telepresence app, sitting in what appears to be Facebook’s real-world offices in Menlo Park, CA. 

Barra is an obviously talented technology executive, having worked on the development of Android at Google from 2010 to 2013, and as we noted earlier, helping to raise Xiaomi’s global profile from 2013 onward. Zuckerberg didn’t say much in his post beyond the usual jargon used to effusively introduce someone to a new technology role, but it’s also worth noting that this isn’t only for Oculus; it’s for all of Facebook’s virtual reality and augmented reality efforts, which presumably will extend beyond the headset-required Oculus experience. 

The article was published on : theverge