Brendan Iribe departs Oculus
Co-founder of Facebook's VR firm announces departure after six years with the company to "recharge, reflect and be creative"
Original story (22/10/2018): Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe today announced on his Facebook page that he is leaving the company.
"So much has happened since the day we founded Oculus in July 2012," Iribe said. "I never could have imagined how much we would accomplish and how far we would come. And now, after six incredible years, I am moving on."
As for where he's moving on to, that's yet to be determined.
"This will be the first real break I've taken in over 20 years," Iribe said. "It's time to recharge, reflect and be creative. I'm excited for the next chapter."
Iribe served as CEO of Oculus from its 2012 founding and Kickstarter campaign through its 2014 acquisition by Facebook for $2 billion. He stepped down as CEO in 2016 amid a restructuring, but remained with the company.
"I'm deeply proud and grateful for all that we've done together," Iribe said. "We assembled one of the greatest research and engineering teams in history, delivered the first step of true virtual presence with Oculus Rift and Touch, and inspired an entirely new industry. We started a revolution that will change the world in ways we can't even envision...
"Now is when we get to pioneer the foundation of the next great computing platform and medium - this is our time to be pushing the state-of-the-art onward and upward.
"Every part of VR and AR needs to improve, especially the hardware and core technology, and Oculus has the best team in the world to do that. Although we're still far from delivering the magical smart glasses we all dream about, now they are nearly within our reach."
UPDATE (23/10/2018): The Oculus Rift 2, the future of which was called into question yesterday following the departure of co-founder Brendan Iribe, is still in development according to parent company Facebook.
Speaking with TechCrunch, a Facebook spokesperson said: “While we can't comment on our product road map specifics, we do have future plans, and can confirm that we are planning for a future version of Rift.”
Oculus head Nate Mitchell also confirmed the company was still “driving forward on the Rift/PC platform with new hardware, software, and content”.