The Head of Facebook’s Beleaguered “Metaverse” VR Platform is Leaving the Company

It’s chaos over there.

Metamates

Less than a year after Facebook rebranded as Meta and launched its Metaverse efforts, the head of its virtual reality platform is leaving the company for greener pastures.

Vivek Sharma, who until this weekend headed up Meta’s Horizon VR platform as a vice president at the tech giant, confirmed to Reuters that he’s leaving the company to pursue outside opportunities.

“Thanks to [Sharma’s] leadership,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement circulated by CNBC, “the Horizon product group has built a strong team with an ambitious vision, and it is just getting started.”

The spokesperson also confirmed to news outlets that those who worked under Sharma, whose teams created the company’s Horizon Worlds world-building VR and its virtual events division Horizon Venues, will now report to Metaverse vice president Vishal Shah.

So far, Meta has struggled to make its Metaverse vision compelling to a meaningful chunk of the population. The question now is whether Sharma’s departure will help or hinder that potential transition.

Short and Winding Road

Since announcing its Metaverse in October 2021 and changing the company name to Meta the following month, the ostensible transition has been rocky.

From a scary whistleblower warning and lots of expert detractions to the arguably more-damaging fact that everything we’ve seen so far of the Metaverse looks pretty “basic” — the term used just this month by CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself to describe the graphics of his much-clowned-upon avatar — it hasn’t been an easy road for the nascent Metaverse, even as the company has poured billions into making it viable.

Sharma has so far declined further about his exit, so it’s unclear whether he was force out or jumped ship, nevermind how the departure will effect Zuckerberg’s vision long term.

From an optics perspective, though, it certainly doesn’t look great.

READ MORE: Meta head of virtual reality platform Horizon leaving company [Reuters]

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