Clay Bavor, a Google veteran of 18 years who recently led the company's AR/VR efforts, leaves to start an AI company with former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor
17m — I started my first business in second grade … Leo Gebbie / independent : Don't expect to see an Apple virtual-reality headset soon Tweets: Megan Quinn / @msquinn : Impossible to overstate how excited I am for my friends @claybavor & @btaylor on their new endeavor! Dream team. https://www.linkedin.com/... Matthew Ball / @ballmatthew : Head of AR/VR at Google, who was made a direct report of Sundar last year as the company targeted a 2024 AR glasses relaunch, leaves Google after 18 years to focus on AI https://twitter.com/... Thanks: @technacity
Context & Ripple Effects
Clay Bavor has run Google's immersive-computing bet for most of his tenure there — he opened Google's VR division in 2016, shepherded Cardboard and Daydream, and by 2021 had been handed the Labs umbrella spanning Area 120, AR/VR, and the Starline holographic video booth. Per Matthew Ball's readout, he was elevated to a direct report of Sundar last year just as Google targeted a 2024 relaunch of AR glasses.
The departure matters because it removes Google's most tenured AR/VR champion precisely at the point its headset roadmap was supposed to reach market — and because his cofounder is Bret Taylor, the former Salesforce co-CEO, pointing the new company at AI rather than at the field Bavor built.
First-order effects
- Google loses the executive who owned Area 120, AR/VR, and Project Starline, and must reassign the Labs portfolio while its 2024 AR glasses push is still pre-launch.
- The new Bavor-Taylor company gets a founding team combining deep immersive-computing product experience with top-level enterprise SaaS operating experience.
Second-order effects
- Google's AR glasses timeline now depends on whoever inherits Labs sustaining momentum without its architect — a succession risk competitors building headsets do not face.
- Senior operators watching one more high-profile platform leader choose an AI startup over a big-tech division reinforces the pull of founder equity over internal promotion.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, immersive computing inside big tech becomes an orphaned long-horizon bet: its best advocates leave for AI ventures, and hardware roadmaps lose their internal sponsorship before they ship.
The trend: Veteran platform executives are leaving big tech at the peak of their remits to found AI companies, draining the sponsors that ambitious side-bets like AR glasses depend on.