Facebook Hires Google AR/VR Lead to Oversee Portal Hardware
Facebook hires Ryan Cairns, Google's former AR/VR engineering lead, to manage its Portal hardware division following a recent internal restructuring.
Facebook hires Ryan Cairns, who previously leads Google's entire AR/VR team of over 500 people, to take charge of Portal hardware. Cairns brings 12 years of Google experience to Facebook, where he oversees the development of the Portal smart screen devices. This high-profile move shifts a top AR/VR engineer into a prominent smart home hardware role.
This leadership change follows a major internal restructuring at Facebook that splits the Building 8 hardware team into two distinct groups. Previously, Rafa Camargo leads the Portal team, but he now transitions to oversee Facebook's AR/VR efforts. Meanwhile, Michael Abrash remains in his position as chief scientist leading Facebook Reality Labs despite the management shuffle.
Although moving an AR/VR expert to a smart display team seems unusual, Facebook sees significant technological overlap between the two product lines. The Portal device relies heavily on advanced computer vision technology to track faces and bodies for automatic camera framing. These are the exact same underlying technologies that power AR platforms like Google's ARCore, making Cairns a natural fit for the Portal hardware team.