Earlier this week, we learned Hugo Barra would be leaving Xiaomi. That was a bit surprising because it was only last November when we said that he would be leading the company into the US market in one or two years. He resigned from Xiaomi to go back to Silicon Valley. As to what company, we had no idea a few days ago but now we have an answer from no one else but Mark Zuckerberg.
What does he have to do with Barra? The Facebook CEO just revealed that Hugo Barra is joining the top social network. Barra won’t be leading a mobile or hardware division this time but he will work on virtual reality projects. This includes the Oculus team so we know the company is getting more serious with virtual reality. Zuckerberg even made fun by introducing Hugo Barra in VR. The two are “together” in a post but in reality, the Xiaomi exec is in China.
From Google to Xiaomi to Facebook, it seems that Hugo Barra will remain and still be visible in the mobile industry. He will have a different role in Facebook but we all know that the VR efforts will be first experienced with a mobile device.
Like Mark Zuckerberg, Hugo Barra believes in the potential of virtual and augmented reality. They both believe VR and AR will be the next major computing platform but such will take a lot of research and development. Hugo will help Facebook make that VR/AR into new standards in the industry.
There’s no mention when exactly Barra will begin working with Facebook but he is still in Beijing right now. We’re looking forward to the next few weeks when he’ll officially be back in Silicon Valley.
SOURCE: Mark Zuckerberg
