On Wednesday, Facebook announced Andrew Bosworth, the current head of hardware at Oculus and other consumer devices, as CTO chief technology officer, replacing outgoing CTO Mike Schroepfer.
In his new role, Bosworth will continue to lead the hardware team, called Facebook Reality Labs, but also takes charge of Facebook's broader software engineering division and artificial intelligence efforts. He will be referring directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is keenly interested in developing AR glasses and metaverse.
Facebook is still relatively new to hardware sales and is viewed with great skepticism by potential customers due to privacy scandals.
But even so, the company has significantly increased its hardware efforts in recent years under Bosworth. The Reality Labs team already has more than 10.000 employees, and is one of the largest divisions of the company.
"Our next technician, Boz, will continue to lead Facebook Reality Labs and oversee our work on augmented reality, virtual reality and more. "As part of this transition, some other teams will also join Boz's team." Reported Zuckerberg in a statement.
"All of this is fundamental to our broader efforts to help build the metaverse, and I'm excited about the future of this Boz-led project."
Bosworth is one of Facebook's longest-serving executives, having joined the company 15 years ago. Prior to joining Reality Labs, he led the advertising department and worked on the first versions of key Facebook features, such as News Feed, Messenger, and Groups.
