Hugo Barra leaves Xiaomi, joins Facebook’s VR team


I guess everyone agrees that Hugo Barra’s resignation a couple of days ago was a big surprise, especially after spending 3.5 years in Xiaomi. He was the one – after all- who transformed the company from a local Chinese giant, to one of the top tech manufacturers in the world.

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That’s why today’s announcement that he joins th Oculus VR team of Facebook was also another surprise! Hugo joins the team of Mark ZuckerbergĀ as vice president of virtual reality at Facebook and will lead the Oculus team.

Mark Zuckerberg already commented on this saying:

Barra is joining forces with Mark Zuckerberg as vice president of virtual reality at Facebook and will lead the Oculus team. Zuckerberg himself first posted the news on his Facebook page:

Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major platform.

According to the official announcement, Hugo Barra will work closely with Mark Zuckerberg,Ā Brendan Iribe, founder of Oculus, Mike Schroepfer, CTO of Facebook and ā€œthe visionaries in the Oculus teamā€ as put by Barra.

The news announcement was shared in Facebook along with an awesome VR selfie ofĀ  Hugo Barra and Mark Zuckerberg next to each other, even though Hugo is still in Beijing!

So we look forward to seeing what Hugo has planned for us in the VR world of Facebook.

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5 Comments

  1. Zero
    January 26, 2017

    So… Hugo left Xiaomi to save Occulus?

  2. dref
    January 26, 2017

    I’m I too old or VR is more than a new hype product?

    • January 26, 2017

      VR is slowly dying so you can just skip it. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to try or own an HTC Vive though!

  3. Sansa
    January 27, 2017

    Like facebook itself wasn’t “virtual reality” enough.

  4. NextHype
    January 27, 2017

    an awesome VR selfie of Hugo Barra and Mark Zuckerberg next to each other ?
    Where ?

    I just see the 2017 version of some gay Beavis and Butthead