Meta is reorganizing its metaverse unit and shifting an executive who led the efforts to its AI division.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told employees on Monday in an internal memo, which was seen by Business Insider, that Gabriel Aul, who led products for its virtual worlds, Meta Horizon, and Ryan Cairns, who is in charge of Meta’s virtual reality hardware, will now lead the company’s metaverse bets.
“The priority of the metaverse work remains unchanged, and it continues to be a companywide priority,” Bosworth wrote in the memo. “We’ve proved our thesis to the industry, and we continue to see competitors enter this space to try and catch up to us, so we need to continue to press our hard-earned advantage.”
Vishal Shah, who helped lead its metaverse bets over the past four years, announced in another memo that he’s transitioning to Meta Superintelligence Labs, according to a copy of the memo seen by Business Insider.
Shah said he’s taking on a new role as vice president of AI products in the Products and Applied Research unit within MSL and will report directly to Nat Friedman, one of MSL’s leaders.
The reorganization of the metaverse team comes as the company’s total investment in mixed and virtual reality is set to top $100 billion this year.
Meta confirmed the move with Business Insider.
Last week, Meta cut 600 jobs in its AI division, MSL, and also laid off employees in its risk organization, telling workers that their roles are being replaced by AI.
Read Bosworth’s full memo below:
An update to Metaverse’s structureI hope you’ve had time to read Vishal’s update about him taking on a new role in MSL leading product and cross-company integrations on the Products and Applied Research Team. I’m pleased that he will oversee the integration of personal superintelligence with FoA and RL’s portfolio. I’m confident that his deep expertise and experience with RL will accelerate our work.It is thanks to Vishal’s leadership for the last four years that we find ourselves well-equipped 1 deliver on our vision and strategy. We already have the right leadership and team in place.Gabriel Aul will step in to lead the Metaverse PG. Metaverse will continue to focus on creating high-quality experiences for both VR and mobile. Jason Rubin, Samantha Ryan, and Thamara Sekhar will move to report to Gabe. We will also welcome a new leader, Saxs Person, to lead the Horizon Experiences team under Gabe.Ryan Cairns will continue to lead Horizon OS which will become an org-level PG, and he’ll report directly to me. The Horizon OS charter and reporting structure remain unchanged. They will continue to focus on building quality hardware and software for the metaverse, especially ahead of our big launches and exciting VR roadmap. Metaverse and Horizon OS will continue to work closely together to ensure an integrated product experience across our devices and platforms. Gabe’s and Ryan’s posts will have more on this, and you can ask me more questions during Tuesdays with Boz tomorrow.The priority of the metaverse work remains unchanged and it continues to be a companywide priority. We’ve proved our thesis to the industry and we continue to see competitors enter this space to try and catch up to us, so we need to continue to press our hard-earned advantage.VR is evolving beyond its roots in gaming to become a broader platform for entertainment, productivity, and connection as we deepen our Al and general compute capabilities. Mobile is starting to attract young social gamers at a greater scale and our Al creation tools are accelerating world-building to create the flywheel. We have the right team and strategy in place and now we need to focus on execution.
Read the memo Shah posted about his new role below:
A New Chapter: Transitioning from Metaverse PG to Leading Product for MSL PARAfter four years in Reality Labs, I’m making the simultaneously difficult yet exciting decision transition from leading the Metaverse Product Group to taking on a new role as VP, AI Products in Products & Applied Research (PAR) within Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), reporting Nat Friedman. In this role, I’ll lead product management and oversee MSL’s integrations in the Family of Apps and Reality Labs. My first day will be Monday, November 3.While the Metaverse hype has thankfully died down, we have been hard at work building over the last few years. We laid the foundations for VR hardware, have become market leaders in competitive categories, and developed a very exciting device roadmap to broaden appeal, invested years in our new Horizon engine to support a much higher level of concurrency and fidelity. We rebuilt the avatar stack, created a new house style, and will introduce photorealistic codec avatars. We brought Horizon mobile to market, have exciting Al-centric tools, and a compelling roadmap designed to make world-building much easier for everyone.This work has been really awesome and personally rewarding, and I am very confident we har the right leadership team to carry it forward. We’ll share more details on what’s next in the RL and Metaverse Org groups soon, so stay tuned.I truly believe that Al is one of the most transformative shifts of our generation, and I’m excite for the new challenge of leading Product for PAR. My experiences at Reality Labs and Instagram have shaped how I think about building products that connect billions of people anc drive innovation. Working across so many different parts of Meta over the years will be valuable in ensuring the work we’re doing in Al can truly scale and deliver value across the entire company.As Mark shared at Connect this year, Al and the metaverse are deeply intertwined, with Al enabling more personalized, context-aware, and meaningful experiences. Our goal of building personal superintelligence will help unlock new opportunities for creators, businesses, and communities in the metaverse. I plan to remain very involved in building bridges between MSL and RL that will enable us to shape how we deliver personal superintelligence to billions of people across all devices.Thanks everyone for your ongoing support and for following along with me on this next chapter. Let’s keep building.
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