ABAB Pedia

Andrew Bosworth

Andrew Bosworth, known as Boz, is the chief technology officer of Meta, where he leads Reality Labs; he has worked at Facebook, now MetaMetaMeta (Meta Platforms, Inc.) is a publicly listed American technology company, renamed from Facebook in 2021, that operates social communication, digital advertising, virtual reality, smart glasses and artificial intelligence businesses.Open the full entry, since 2006.

Contents8 sections
Key facts

Early Career: Harvard and Microsoft

Joining Facebook

Bosworth joined Facebook in 2006, helped create its core News Feed service, helped lead the Groups, Messenger and video calling units, and was at one point vice president of ad operations and business platform.⁠[2][1]

2017 onward: Leading Virtual and Augmented Reality

Since 2017 Bosworth has led Facebook’s virtual reality unit, which works on Oculus headsets, the Portal video-calling device and smart glasses developed with Ray-Ban, along with augmented reality projects.⁠[2]

Leaked Internal Memo

In 2018 an internal Facebook memo Bosworth had written about the company’s growth-first approach was leaked to BuzzFeed News; it included the line “Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies.” He later disowned the comments, saying the post was meant to “bring to the surface issues I felt deserved more discussion.”⁠[2]

Named Chief Technology Officer

On September 22, 2021, Facebook named Bosworth chief technology officer, succeeding Mike Schroepfer, who planned to step down in 2022; the role was to span the data systems behind the ad business, consumer hardware, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and efforts against misinformation and toxic posts. He said at the time: “This is all foundational to our broader efforts helping to build the metaverse.”⁠[2]

Bosworth is now Meta’s chief technology officer and leads the Reality Labs team.⁠[3][1]

Conversation on the a16z Podcast

The conversation ran from the early News Feed days at Facebook to smart glasses and augmented reality headsets, covering the evolution of Reality Labs, a post-mobile world, whether AI upends the app model, open-source Llama and “commoditizing your complements,” and the risks to that vision. On how today’s apps are used, Bosworth said: “We haven't changed modalities.” On devices with AI as the main interface, he said: “It's not even a platform yet.”⁠[5][6]

Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts

Sources

  1. Who Are You and Why Should I Care? (opens in a new window)
  2. Meet Facebook’s new tech chief Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth (opens in a new window)
  3. Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer (opens in a new window)
  4. What Comes After Mobile? Meta’s Andrew Bosworth on AI and Consumer Tech (opens in a new window)
  5. What Comes After Mobile? Meta’s Andrew Bosworth on AI and Consumer Tech (opens in a new window)
  6. What Comes After Mobile? Meta’s Andrew Bosworth on AI and Consumer Tech (opens in a new window)
  7. boz. (opens in a new window)