The co-founder and CEO of Facebook’s Oculus virtual reality business is leaving.
Brendan Iribe said in a Facebook post on Monday that he was stepping down from Facebook, without saying why. Although Iribe had the title of CEO—a carryover from when Oculus was an independent startup—Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hired Hugo Barra, a former executive of the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, to lead Oculus in 2017 as Facebook’s vice president of virtual reality.
Facebook bought the Oculus VR startup in 2014 for $2 billion and has since debuted several VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and Go, although the technology hasn’t caught on with mainstream consumers.
Iribe’s departure from Facebook follows the March 2017 departure of controversial Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey. Two other Oculus co-founders, Nate Mitchell and Michael Antonov, remain at Facebook.
Iribe did not disclose any future plans.
His exit from Facebook comes amid arguments between higher-level executives there over a decision to cancel a future Rift VR headset that’s powered by personal computers, according a report by TechCrunch that cites an unnamed source. Facebook recently debuted its Quest VR headset that doesn’t need a PC to operate, but hinted during its annual Oculus event in September that it was still planning a newer version of its Rift headset.
Mitchell said in a Tweet on Monday that Oculus was “still driving forward on the Rift/PC platform with new hardware, software, and content.”
A lot of questions today about the future of Rift — we're still driving forward on the Rift/PC platform with new hardware, software, and content.
Lots of great stuff in the works. More to share in the months ahead.
— Nate Mitchell (@natemitchell) October 22, 2018
Several other executives from other startups that Facebook acquired have also left the social media giant in recent months.
Get Data Sheet, Coins2Day’s technology newsletter.
Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger said in September that they would leave Facebook, just months after Jan Koum, the CEO of messaging app WhatsApp, said he was leaving the company.
Coins2Day contacted Oculus for more information and will update this story if it responds.
