META Meta Platforms Inc

By Patrick Thomas 

Oculus VR co-founder Brendan Iribe announced over social media Monday that he is leaving Facebook Inc., the latest in a series of executives to exit from the company.

"What a ride! We made science fiction into reality and inspired a new industry in the process," Mr. Iribe tweeted Monday afternoon.

Mr. Iribe serves as vice president of computer-tethered virtual reality for Facebook. He left his role as chief executive officer of Oculus in 2016.

Facebook said Nate Mitchell, also an Oculus co-founder who had been leading Oculus with Mr. Iribe, would take over the newly vacated role. The company said Mr. Iribe is expected to stay on through mid-November to help with the transition.

Mr. Iribe was chief executive of Oculus VR when Facebook acquired it in 2014 for more than $2 billion. Another Oculus co-founder, Palmer Luckey, left Facebook in March 2017 after a series of disputes with the company.

In a Facebook post, Mr. Iribe said this will be his "first real break" from work in more than 20 years.

His exit comes not long after the departure of the WhatsApp and Instagram founders, who likewise sold their companies to Facebook for large amounts and ultimately chafed in their roles as part of the social-media giant's empire.

Oculus was founded in 2012 by Mr. Luckey, who was home-schooled and got his start in tech repairing old Apple Inc. iPhones. He raised more than $2.4 million from a Kickstarter campaign to help fund development of the company's first product.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he sees virtual reality as the next major computing platform.

Oculus has had a troubled history within Facebook since the sale.

Facebook and its co-defendants, including Mr. Luckey, last year were ordered to pay $500 million to ZeniMax Media Inc. after a jury found the social network's Oculus VR unit unfairly used ZeniMax code to build a virtual-reality headset.

Last month, Facebook introduced a new device, called the Oculus Quest, that is designed to deliver high-end VR content without the need to be tethered to a computer or game console. The goal is to give Facebook a bigger share of the nascent virtual-reality gaming market, where it has previously trailed Sony Corp.'s PlayStation VR by a wide margin. The Rift sold about 400,000 units last year against 1.6 million VR headsets sold by Sony, according to IDC estimates.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 22, 2018 19:57 ET (23:57 GMT)

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