Oculus gets new leader in former Google and Xiaomi exec

Oculus has a new boss.

Hugo Barra, who recently left Xiaomi where he helped launch the Chinese company’s virtual reality headset, will be joining Facebook in a couple of months to head all of the company’s virtual reality efforts, including leading the Oculus team.

He is filling a role at Oculus left empty since last month when Facebook announced that Brendan Iribe was taking on a different role.

“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,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in an announcement post on Facebook last night. “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 wrote in a post on his own Facebook page that he is joining the company as VP of VR and to lead the Oculus team.

“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,” he wrote. “That will be my mission at Facebook and I look forward to building the future of immersive technology with Mark Zuckerberg, Brendan Trexler Iribe, Mike Schroepfer, and the visionaries in the Oculus team.”

He also thanked Zuckerberg on the CEO’s Facebook post adding that he would be joining 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 :),” he wrote.

In testimony during the ongoing Oculus Rift lawsuit, Zuckerberg said that he expects Facebook to spend $3 billion over the next decade to bring virtual reality to the world.

You can read more about his testimony right here and catch up on the trial here.