Hugo Barra Returns to Silicon Valley as Facebook’s VR Chief

Hugo Barra, who was poached from Google to head Xiaomi's international expansion plans, is set to join Facebook to lead the company’s VR division.

Barra who was based out of China during his tenure with Xiaomi had recently resigned from the company citing health concerns and a new role. It was rumored that he will return to Silicon Valley and now we have the confirmation that he will joining Facebook as vice president of virtual reality and will lead the Oculus team.

Barra was hired from Google in 2013 where he was a vice president working on the Android mobile operating system.

In a social media post, Barra had said that he was leaving the company after three-and-a-half years for a new project based in Silicon Valley.

In a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg said, "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."

Former Oculus CEO, Brendan Iribe, has stepped down from his role in December to focus on Oculus' newly established internal PC virtual reality division. Facebook has announced an internal shuffle in its VR division and it is going to divide its business into two - one to focus on desktop-based VR, such as the Oculus Rift headset, and the other on mobile VR.

According to "Virtual Reality Market by Component (Hardware and Software), Technology (Non-Immersive, Semi- & Fully Immersive), Device Type (Head-Mounted Display, Gesture Control Device), Application and Geography - Global Forecast to 2022", the virtual reality market is expected to grow from USD 1.37 Billion in 2015 to USD 33.90 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 57.8% between 2016 and 2022. The increasing use of head-mounted displays (HMDs) in the entertainment and gaming sector, declining prices of displays and other hardware components of HMDs, and use of VR for training and simulation in the defense sector are the major factors driving the virtual reality market.