Hugo Barra leaves Xiaomi for Facebook, will lead Oculus as VP of VR

Enlarge / Hugo Barra and Mark Zuckerberg celebrate Barra's hiring in Facebook's (unnamed and unreleased) social VR app. (credit: Mark Zuckerberg)

Hugo Barra, a former vice president at Xiaomi and Google, is leaving Xiaomi to lead the VR efforts at Facebook. The move was announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on (where else?) Facebook last night. Zuckerberg said Barra would "lead all of [Facebook's] virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team." In a later post, Barra said his title was "VP of Virtual Reality" and that he would "lead the Oculus team."

Barra became well known in the tech world when he worked at Google, where he was the VP of Android. At Google he was generally the company's main presenter for events, where he introduced several Nexus phones and versions of Android. Barra left Google for Xiaomi, where he was "VP of International." Again he was basically the face of the company outside of China and hosted most of the company's product launches. In a post on Facebook, Barra said he left Xiaomi due to a desire to move from China back to Silicon Valley, which he considers his home.

At Xiaomi, Barra launched Xiaomi Global under which the company expanded to India, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and 20 other markets. Xiaomi partnered with Google to launch the "Mi Box" Android TV device in the US, but the company has yet to bring its smartphones to the US. Xiaomi recently released the stunning Mi Mix in China, but tough times are ahead as Chinese rivals Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo are passing the company in sales. Xiaomi has also said it's skipping out on Mobile World Congress this year.