Facebook is serious about being a long-term player in hardware. On Wednesday, the company promoted Andrew Bosworth, the current head of its hardware division that makes Oculus and other consumer devices, to the role of chief technology officer, replacing outgoing CTO Mike Schroepfer when he becomes a senior fellow next year.

In his new role, Bosworth, who goes by Boz, will continue to lead the hardware group, called Facebook Reality Labs, while also assuming responsibility for Facebook’s broader engineering organization and artificial intelligence efforts. He’ll report directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has taken a keen interest in developing AR glasses and the metaverse.

“As our next CTO, Boz will continue leading Facebook Reality Labs and overseeing our work in augmented reality, virtual reality and more, and as part of this transition a few other groups will join Boz’s team as well,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “This is all foundational to our broader efforts helping to build the metaverse, and I’m excited about the future of this work under Boz’s leadership.”

Facebook is still a relative newcomer to selling consumer hardware, and it faces steep skepticism from potential customers given its long litany of privacy scandals. Even still, the company has significantly ramped up its hardware efforts in recent years under Bosworth’s watch. His Reality Labs team already has over 10,000 employees, making it the largest after the engineering organization that supports Facebook’s suite of apps and infrastructure.

Bosworth is one of Facebook’s longest-serving executives, having joined the company over 15 years ago. Before running Facebook’s hardware division, he led its ads product division and worked on the first versions of key Facebook features like the News Feed, Messenger, and Groups.

This story is developing…