Hugo Barra is a well-known name among Android fans as he was the VP and spokesperson for Google’s Android division. Barra left Google and Android to take the VP position at Chinese electronics maker, Xiaomi. Barra’s role at Xiaomi was to try and bring the company into the sights of the U.S. market, and he succeeded in some ways. While Xiaomi isn’t selling all of their products in the U.S. just yet, they are picking up recognition in the States, even making it to CES 2017.
Now Hugo Barra is moving on to the next phase of his career and his life. Barra announced he was leaving Xiaomi due to missing his home in Silicon Valley as well as his family. At the time Barra didn’t give any indication of where he was heading or where he was landing, but we now know. Hugo Barra will be joining Facebook, specifically the Oculus VR team. The announcement was made via Mark Zuckerburg’s Facebook page and you can read it below.
I’m excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team. Hugo’s in China right now, so here we are together in VR. It seems fitting.
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.
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.
Barra did respond to Zuckerberg’s post:
Thanks, Mark! I can’t wait to get started in building that future and join the team in a couple of months. 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. Really looking forward to doing just that at Facebook — taking VR mainstream — working with you, Brendan, Mike Schroepfer, and the Oculus team!
What do you think of Barra leaving Xiaomi and heading to Facebook to head up the VR and Oculus efforts there? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
[button link=”https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103456684278791″ icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Facebook[/button]
