Meta’s Vivek Sharma, VP of the company’s own Horizon Social VR platform, is leaving the company, as reported Reuters, META spokesperson Brian Pope confirms Sharma’s departure ledge And that Sharma is going to pursue an unrelated career opportunity.
Sharma’s departure for Horizon is happening at a strange time. The Metaverse is a huge bet for Meta, with Horizon as its centerpiece, but the whole effort became a meme last week. To help promote Horizon Worlds’ launch in France and Spain, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a screenshot to Horizon featuring his dead-eyed avatar prominently, which almost immediately became a popular joke on the Internet. . Zuckerberg shared the concept art of the more detailed avatar a few days later, but the damage was already done. There’s even a Snapchat filter that parodies Zuckerberg’s meme-ified look.
The meme moment and Sharma’s departure are only small blips to the company’s Metaverse ambitions. Meta is moving forward with new hardware, including a new VR headset that Zuckerberg said yesterday that will launch in October. And this week, the company introduced its new meta accounts that let you use the Quest headset without logging into Facebook. But the metaverse is proving to be a costly undertaking so far. Last quarter, the company’s Reality Labs division reported a loss of $2.8 billion.
Pope said Sharma’s team will now report to Metaverse VP Vishal Shah of Meta.
“We are grateful for Vivek’s contributions to our Marketplace, Gaming and Metaverse teams over the past six years and we wish him well,” Pope said in a statement. “Thanks to his leadership, Horizon Product Group has built a strong team with an ambitious vision and this is just getting started. META continues to be a source of developing great leaders, and we are excited to see that happen.” As to what Vivek achieves in his next chapter, Sharma did not immediately respond to a request for comment.