Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey is leaving Facebook almost three years after he sold his virtual reality startup to the social giant for more than $2 billion.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is leaving Facebook
Luckey was the face of Oculus, but ran into some trouble last fall.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the departure on Thursday and sent Recode the following statement.
“Palmer will be dearly missed. Palmer’s legacy extends far beyond Oculus. His inventive spirit helped kickstart the modern VR revolution and build an industry. We’re thankful for everything he did for Oculus and VR, and we wish him all the best.”
It’s unclear whether Luckey is leaving voluntarily — a spokesperson declined to specify. But his role inside Oculus, which was always a little undefined as he served as a sort of brand ambassador for the company and even the VR industry at large, had diminished in recent months following a report that he was financing an online group creating unflattering internet memes about Hillary Clinton.
Luckey told The Daily Beast that the Hillary bashing “sounded like a real jolly good time.”
Now Luckey is out and Oculus is in the process of regrouping a bit following a number of executive changes in the past few months. Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe stepped down into a product role in December, and then Facebook hired former Xioami exec Hugo Barra to come lead all of its VR efforts.
The news also comes on the heels of a lawsuit in which Oculus was instructed to pay $500 million in damages following accusations that Luckey violated an NDA agreement when building early versions of the company’s Oculus Rift headset.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
