Facebook’s secretive and ambitious hardware group is preparing for its debut next month (FB)

pulse

March 20, 2017 1:32 PM

For the past year, Facebook has been quietly assembling an all-star team of hardware experts for its mysterious Building 8 division. Here's what we know so far.

Three Building 8 workers tinker away.

The all-star roster of tech veterans that Facebook began assembling one year ago is quietly making progress, steadily expanding the size of its ranks and the hardware prototypes under development.

The group, known as Building 8, currently has four simultaneous projects underway, spanning everything from cameras and augmented reality to science fiction-like brain scanning technology, Business Insider has learned.

And Facebook is already thinking about the coming-out party for its impending family of gadgets, laying the groundwork to drum up interest and sell the products when the time is right. Building 8 has yet to unveil any of its products, but people familiar with the matter said the hardware group is expected to play a key role in Facebook’s developer conference next month, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave his 10-year vision for the company last year.

The move to hardware is an ambitious and risky adventure for Facebook, which reigns as an internet superpower thanks to its nearly 2 billion users. With virtually no experience in the world of hardware, Facebook is taking on deep-pocketed competitors like Apple, Google and upstarts such as Snap, in a cut-throat business defined by thin profit margins and complex logistics.

And Facebook doesn't appear to be treating Building 8 like a hobby.

An analysis of Building 8’s recent hires and job listings by Business Insider, as well as conversations with people close to the company, shows an ambitious effort to create and sell millions of consumer hardware units, from a supply chain outpost in Hong Kong to a planned retail push and customer call center operation.

Facebook declined to comment for this story.

Cardiologists and prosthetics

Building 8 is structured similarly to Google's Advanced Technology and Projects Group, or ATAP, and is also similar to X, the “moonshot” lab where Google's self-driving cars were born.

At Building 8, technical project leads are treated like mini-CEOs and given two-year deadlines to prove a concept that will either be shipped and sold or spun out into a different part of Facebook, which also owns Oculus VR, WhatsApp, and Instagram.