Yahoo Finance Oculus co-founder joins exodus of senior staff from Facebook
Facebook has suffered another high-profile departure after the co-founder of its virtual reality division announced he was stepping down.
Brendan Iribe, who helped create Oculus in 2012 and served as its chief executive until 2016, became the latest in a string of founders to leave the social network after it acquired their companies.
He follows Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the founders of Instagram, who quit suddenly in September amidst reports of interference from on high, as well as his own co-founder Palmer Luckey, who was ousted in 2017.
In a public Facebook post, Mr Iribe said: "I'd like to sincerely thank everyone that's been a part of this amazing journey, especially Mark [Zuckerberg] for believing in this team and the future of VR and AR.
"This will be the first real break I've taken in over 20 years. It's time to recharge, reflect and be creative. I'm excited for the next chapter."
He did not say why he was leaving, but other former employees have described pressure from Facebook to integrate their services with its own and increased meddling by Mr Zuckerberg.
Brian Acton, the co-founder of Whatsapp who quit Facebook in 2017, said he left because of repeated pushes to monetise his app with advertising or data collection, while Mr Luckey said working at Facebook had taught him to "be careful who you trust".
Mr Systrom has been less open, but told a conference audience last week that "no on ever leaves a job because everything's awesome".
Oculus was bought by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion, but has struggled to sell enough virtual reality headsets to justify the tremendous hype that surrounded it.
In 2017 it was successfully sued by Zenimax, a video game company, for infringement of copyright, with Mr Iribe being ordered to pay $150 million in damages.
