Former Metaverse Products Group lead Gabriel Aul.
Leon Bennett/Getty Images for 20th Century Studios
Meta's metaverse division has a new leader — again.The latest executive shuffle inside Reality Labs comes as Meta continues to scale back parts of its metaverse ambitions and pour billions into AI, raising questions about where the company's virtual-world strategy fits in its future.Gabriel Aul, who had served as the head of the metaverse products group since October of last year, announced his retirement after a few months on the job in February, according to a memo obtained by Business Insider."Even though we will still have Gabe for a few more months, please join me in wishing him all the best in his much deserved retirement," Meta's chief technical officer, Andrew Bosworth, wrote in the note.Aul, the former Metaverse unit head, was replaced by Saxs Persson, a former Epic Games executive who joined Meta in the October reshuffle, according to the memo. Aul briefly stayed on at Meta in an advisory role and fully left Meta last month, his LinkedIn shows.The previous top metaverse executive, Vishal Shah, left in the October 2025 reorganization for a top position inside Meta's superintelligence effort.Meta's big bet on the metaverse hasn't quite worked out, despite billions of dollars in spending. In March, Meta conducted substantial layoffs across the Reality Labs division, which oversees the metaverse. The company also shut down support for its virtual world Horizon earlier this year on its virtual reality headsets, only to reverse that decision later, according to an Instagram post from CTO Bosworth.
