Not too long after Instagram co-founders announced their departure from Facebook, Brendan Iribe has now confirmed that he’s leaving Facebook. He’s the former CEO and co-founder of Oculus, the virtual reality company that Facebook acquired a few years back. Iribe’s departure comes after some changes in the VR company which resulted in the cancelation of its Rift 2 headset.
TechCrunch hears from a source that the Rift 2 PC VR headset’s development was being led by Iribe. He and the Facebook executive team reportedly had “fundamentally different views on the future of Oculus that grew deeper over time,” and that he wasn’t interested in a “race to the bottom” as far as performance was concerned.
Iribe didn’t touch on these matters in his farewell post on Facebook. “The success of Oculus was only possible because of such an extraordinary team effort. I’d like to sincerely thank everyone that’s been a part of this amazing journey, especially Mark for believing in this team and the future of VR and AR,” he wrote.
Facebook hasn’t denied the report that the Rift 2 headset has been canceled but the company reiterated to the scribe that it will continue to invest in VR technologies for PC. “While we can’t comment on our product roadmap specifics, we do have future plans, and can confirm that we are planning for a future version of Rift,” said a spokesperson for the company.