Hugo Barra Left Xiaomi To Lead The VR Team At Facebook

At the beginning of the week, Hugo Barra announced his departure from Xiaomi, after three years and a half of working as their VP of International. He said he was going to return to Sillicon Valley, where his family and friends are, and see what adventures await him. A couple of days later we finally understood what he was talking about: a management role on Facebook’s VR team #realitymagic

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spread the news on his Facebook profile, of course: “I’m excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team. […] I’ve known Hugo for a long time, starting when he helped develop the Android operating system, to the last few years he’s worked at Xiaomi in Beijing bringing innovative devices to millions of people. “

After helping Xiaomi launch its Mi VR headset, some might say he got a taste for virtual reality, wanting to invest time, energy and ideas into its promotion. But the truth is Barra always wanted to work in this line of field, as he wrote in a comment: “It’s been a dream of mine to work in virtual reality even back when AR/VR were just figments of science fiction; now we’re taking selfies in virtual worlds 🙂 I learned from Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun that there’s no greater calling in our industry than taking breakthrough tech and making it available to the greatest number of people.”

It seems that Zuckerberg has found his perfect “partner in crime”. Together, they will work to make Oculus, a Facebook-owned VR company, stronger and more appealing to audiences. Plus, they will have to strive to bring more compelling VR content to the masses, a challenge many companies face today.

Luckily, Zuckerberg and Barra are on the same page. “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. Hugo is going to help build that future”, added Mark Zuckerberg.