ChatGPT Is on Fire, and a Cottage Industry of Bot Builders Is Exploding Alongside ItRead Now

The People With Power at Facebook as Its Hardware, Commerce Ambitions Expand

By  |  March 11, 2021 6:01 AM PST

Facebook in recent years has laid out an aggressive strategy of building its own consumer hardware to lessen its dependence on Apple and Google, makers of the two dominant mobile operating systems. The seriousness of its ambitions is reflected in its headcount: Nearly 10,000 people are working in its group developing augmented and virtual reality devices, or nearly one-fifth of Facebook’s total global workforce, according to internal organizational data reviewed by The Information.

Meanwhile, one of Facebook’s other large employee groups, engineering, recently promoted David Mortenson as its new leader. He replaces Jay Parikh, who left last month after spending over a decade building the social network’s data centers and technology infrastructure. And in another previously unreported move, Facebook last summer hired a former YouTube and Spotify executive, Shiva Rajaraman, to lead its budding commerce efforts—a key growth area for the company as it seeks to become more of a shopping destination. These changes, along with updates to the leadership of Facebook’s apps and the formation of its new payments group, are reflected in our updated org chart showing over 130 of the most senior executives at the company.

Get access to exclusive coverage
Read deeply reported stories from the largest newsroom in tech.
Latest Articles
 
The AI Age ai
ChatGPT Is on Fire, and a Cottage Industry of Bot Builders Is Exploding Alongside It
Midjourney art by Clark Miller
Joshua Browder wakes up most mornings wanting to empower the little guy. The entrepreneur, who has been deemed the “Robin Hood of the internet,” has helped people annul marriages, get out of parking tickets and file lawsuits against failed crypto platforms through DoNotPay, his robo lawyer startup. DoNotPay works by automating the slow, convoluted process of navigating bureaucracy,...
Latest Briefs
 
Accounting Firm Mazars to Pause Crypto Work For Binance, Others
Twitter Suspends Accounts of Several Journalists
U.S. Adds Major Chinese Chip Firms to Trade Blacklist
Stay in the know
Receive a summary of the day's top tech news—distilled into one email.
Access on the go
View stories on our mobile app and tune into our weekly podcast.
Join live video Q&A’s
Deep-dive into topics like startups and autonomous vehicles with our top reporters and other executives.
Enjoy a clutter-free experience
Read without any banner ads.
Eight Sleep co-founders Matteo Franceschetti and Alexandra Zatarain. Art by Clark Miller
The Big Read startups
The Co-Founders of Eight Sleep Want to Optimize Your Performance (in Bed)
Matteo Franceschetti and Alexandra Zatarain spend their nights in the bed of the future. The king-size canopy bed has gray curtains gathered at the sides and a strip of sensors that captures each sleeper’s heart rate, respiration, temperature and other vitals.
Org Charts google ai
Alphabet’s ‘Other Bets’ Come Under Pressure as Health Focus Grows
More than seven years after Google morphed into Alphabet, employees and investors are no closer to figuring out whether Alphabet can generate long-term economic value from moonshot bets such as self-driving taxis, drug discovery and deliveries via drones.
Art by Clark Miller
The New Media crypto media/telecom
How CoinDesk Lit the Fuse That Blew Up Crypto—and Might Singe Its Owner Next
Michael Casey, chief content officer of the crypto news site CoinDesk, was at his Westchester County, N.Y., home on Monday, recovering from a trip to Miami the previous week.
From left: David Sacks, Roelof Botha and Sam Bankman-Fried. Photos by Getty; Sequoia; Bloomberg. Art by Mike Sullivan.
startups venture capital
‘Moment of Panic’: FTX Collapse Deepens Fear in Silicon Valley
A month after the sudden collapse of crypto exchange FTX, Silicon Valley startup founders and venture capitalists are grappling with a new feeling: panic.
Art by Clark Miller.
Screentime
The Junior VC Who Spends Almost Every Waking Minute Online
Em Herrera, 23, earned her social media stripes the hard way: running One Direction and Ariana Grande stan Twitter accounts as a teenager.
Apple's App Store boss Phil Schiller. Photo by Bloomberg
apple
The Four Biggest Changes Apple Made to its App Store as Regulators Turned Up the Heat
For years, Apple has defended its iron grip over the way developers distribute apps in the App Store, and the 30% commission it takes from in-app purchases.
Cookies on The Information
We use cookies for a number of reasons, such as keeping The Information reliable and secure, personalizing content and ads, providing social media features and to analyze how our sites are used.