Meta's VP of Horizon, Vivek Sharma, is leaving the company after six years; the Horizon team will report directly to Meta's VP of Metaverse, Vishal Shah
Vivek Sharma ran Horizon through its formative years at Meta, and his exit collapses the org chart: the Horizon team now answers directly to Vishal Shah, Meta's VP of Metaverse, rather than to a separate Horizon VP. The move foreshadows what came next — a year later Shah led a reboot of Horizon Worlds built around Super Rumble, a new mobile app, and a shift from VR-only to VR-first.
The departure also fits a broader pattern of senior churn at Meta: Sandhya Devanathan was brought in to lead India amid several high-profile exits, and by late 2025 Chief Revenue Officer John Hegeman and Business AI lead Clara Shih had also left.
First-order effects
Sharma's six-year run ends and the Horizon organization loses its dedicated VP, with his team folded directly into Vishal Shah's metaverse group.
Second-order effects
Consolidating Horizon under Shah cleared the way for the VR-first relaunch strategy he later outlined, signaling that Meta's consumer metaverse bets would be run from a single desk rather than a parallel division.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds — Sharma out, then Hegeman and Shih — Meta's leadership bench keeps turning over as the company re-prioritizes away from earlier initiatives, forcing repeated reorganizations of teams like Horizon around surviving executives.
The trend: Meta's metaverse ambitions are consolidating under fewer leaders even as veteran executives keep departing, with each exit triggering another layer of reorganization.
Last night Meta sponsored drinks at the Edinburgh TV Festival and here's the survey they had outside the bit where you could try out the Metaverse. Notice how...you can't say you hated it https://twitter.com/...
Why I am skeptical of public policy managers in tech saying “our research proves that...” A public policy manager at FB once told me that my presence as a UX researcher in a meeting with civil society & regulators would be “offensive because they would feel like lab rats”. 🙄 http…
I know for a fact that Meta hires better survey researchers than is reflected below. Presumably they weren't consulted by the events team https://twitter.com/...
Meta's VP of Horizon, Vivek Sharma, is leaving the company, as first reported by @katielpaul. Meta says Sharma will be pursuing a new career opportunity. https://www.theverge.com/...
something worth bookmarking to bring up next time a Silicon Valley executive tries to preach their unbiased devotion to objectivity and data https://twitter.com/...
@sophiasgaler Also seems somewhat odd, how Meta are asking their views on the Metaverse using a slip of paper that's been designed in Word. By someone who doesn't know how to use Word.