Oculus CEO Steps Down, Leaves Power Vacuum Behind

Due to the reorganization that Facebook’s VR company Oculus is going through, the brand’s CEO Brendan Iribe is stepping down from his position. He is set to lead one of two new divisions that will focus on different markets for their VR product, which leaves the top spot up for grabs.

Iribe co-founded Oculus along with the maker of the VR device, Palmer Luckey. According to a blog post that the former CEO wrote, Oculus will be splitting into two divisions that will focus on PC and mobile devices separately.

“Looking ahead and thinking about where I’m most passionate, I’ve decided to lead the PC VR group—pushing the state of VR forward with Rift, research and computer vision,” the post reads. “As we’ve grown, I really missed the deep, day-to-day involvement in building a brand new product on the leading edge of technology.”

Consequently, company newcomer Jon Thomason is tasked to head the mobile division. Iribe also noted how he and Thomason will work together on finding the new CEO of the company, along with Mike Schroepfer, the CTO at Facebook.

Under Iribe’s leadership, Oculus has strived to diversify the industries, devices, and products that its patented VR device can work on. Taking his cue from Google’s successful efforts of spreading Android to simply dominate the mobile OS market, Iribe wanted to make sure that Oculus becomes just as widespread, Bloomberg reports.

This led to several partnerships struck, including the Xbox One VR compatibility that Oculus arranged with Microsoft. The Gear VR by Samsung is also a result of collaboration with Oculus, which is proving to be the most popular mobile VR platform in the market.

The post made no mention of Iribe’s initial partner Luckey, who has been a controversial figure ever since his involvement with the Trump campaign was revealed during the height of the U.S. presidential race. Luckey, and by extension Oculus, received significant backlash after news broke out. According to the company, the Oculus Rift maker has been assigned to a new task, which is yet to be revealed.