Former Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra will join Facebook to lead its virtual-reality efforts, including the Oculus VR team.
In a post on the social network, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: "I'm excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team.”
Barra, a former executive at Google, announced his exit from Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi earlier this week, saying he wanted to return to Silicon Valley.
The digital rendering of the two executives that accompanies the post seems to be captured by Oculus's telepresence app.
In response, Barra said it had been his dream to work in virtual reality “even back when AR/VR were just figments of science fiction”.
In a separate post on his profile, Barra said he is returning to Silicon Valley in a couple of months and will be joining Facebook as VP of virtual reality (VPVR) and lead the Oculus team.
Under Barra, Xiaomi expanded outside of its home market, adding geographies like India, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and more recently 20 other markets, including Russia, Mexico, and Poland.
The top job at Oculus has been vacant since last month, when its CEO Brendan Iribe stepped down to run one of the other divisions.
(With inputs from PTI)
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