Oculus VR co-founder Brendan Iribe is leaving the company. Iribe announced the move in a Facebook post today. Iribe formed Oculus alongside Palmer Luckey, Michael Antonov, and Nate Mitchell in 2012. Facebook bought the company in 2014 for over $2 billion, and launched the Oculus Rift in March 2016.
In his Facebook post, Iribe said, “I never could have imagined how much we would accomplish and how far we would come. And now, after six incredible years, I am moving on.” He continued, “We started a revolution that will change the world in ways we can’t even envision.”
Iribe made no announcements about where he is going next, or why he’s leaving. TechCrunch reports that he is leaving following the cancellation of a “Rift 2” VR headset. Their sources said that Iribe and Facebook had different views on the future of Oculus and VR.
Oculus recently announced the Oculus Quest. The $399 standalone headset, and May’s $199 Oculus Go headset are less powerful VR experiences than the original Rift. These offerings were seemingly in the opposite direction of a second PC VR headset, one that would be more powerful and expensive than the current Rift.
Iribe began his career in video games on Civilization IV from Firaxis Games, where he was a user interface programmer. He went on to co-found Scaleform, a middleware developer for creating user interfaces, with fellow Oculus founder Michael Antonov. Autodesk bought Scaleform in 2011. Following his time at Scaleform, he worked for Gaikai before it was bought by Sony in 2012. Iribe joined Oculus as CEO, a position he held until December 2016. He moved to the newly created PC VR group to focus on Rift, and computer vision.
Brendan Iribe has not announced what he will be doing next. At the end of his post, he noted that this will be his first “real break” in many years.
