Hugo Barra to join Facebook as head of Oculus team

As we reported a few days ago, ex-Android (and now ex-Xiaomi) executive Hugo Barra recently announced his departure from his senior position for Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaomi. Barra mentioned his health and friends as reasons for his departure from China, and hinted he was looking for a job in Silicon Valley. It looks like the search didn't take long, as Barra has just surfaced in a screenshot of an Augmented Reality meeting with CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In an accompanying post, Zuckerberg announced that Barra would be joining Facebook as Vice President of Virtual Reality.

Barra and Zuckerberg both seemed more than keen on the development. Writing about his new position in a post, Barra sounds like he has some lofty ambitions:

"Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun always says that the highest calling of an engineer is to make technology breakthroughs quickly and readily available to the widest possible spectrum of humanity. That will be my mission at Facebook and I look forward to building the future of immersive technology."

Zuckerberg was equally optimistic: 

"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, and I'm looking forward to having him on our team."

It's hard to imagine the move being anything but positive for Facebook and it's ambitions for VR/AR.

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