Exclusive: Meta's head of augmented reality software stepping down

NEW YORK, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Meta's (META.O) head of augmented reality software is stepping down from his role, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Friday, raising questions about the company's progress in developing a custom operating system for its planned AR glasses...

VP of Engineering Don Box announced the end of his tenure at Meta internally this week, without elaborating on what he would do next, according to a source familiar with the matter...

The departure of Box, a veteran engineer with experience building major technology systems from their infancy, could be a setback to progress on the operating system, a key component of Meta's AR glasses project, the source told Reuters...

The head of the company's metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division, CTO Andrew Bosworth, said recently that Meta was still facing "quite a few challenges" in building an AR product that it could bring to market and that "those things are still a few years away - a few, to put it lightly."..

Meta initially hired Box in 2021 to chart a path forward after the failure of its XROS project, which aimed to create a unified custom operating system for its virtual reality headsets, Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses and planned augmented reality glasses, the source said.. Box broke up the 300-person XROS unit into dedicated teams for each device line early last year and personally took over the team focused on AR software, according to both the source and Box's LinkedIn profile...

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