Facebook Hires Ex-Google Executive For AI and Chip Development

• Facebook has hired Shahriar Rabii from Google to be a part of its own silicon project.
• Rabii will be joining Facebook as Vice President and Head of Silicon, to further the social media company’s venture into artificial intelligence and smart devices.
• Rabii has been behind the Google Pixel’s custom Visual Core chip and has experience in Google’s virtual reality department as well.

Reports of Facebook building its own semiconductors are turning out to be true with the social media company hiring Google’s head of chip development Shahriar Rabii. The former Google employee will be working with the social media company's self-produced semiconductors. Facebook will be producing its own hardware in the near future and self-produced chipsets can help the company secure its infrastructure.

The social media company started forming its team for building semiconductors in April according to news reports. It can also offer better security to the company compared to relying on third-party vendors like Qualcomm, Intel, and Nvidia for sourcing chipsets. With a lot of Facebook’s future goals focused on artificial intelligence and its usage to reduce hate speech and fake news on the social media platform, custom chipsets can benefit the company greatly in that front.

Facebook has started working on its own smart speakers to compete against Amazon Alexa and similar devices according to reports. Custom processors can help the social media giant have more control over product development and integrate hardware and software more closely. Apple has been using its custom chipsets for quite some time now on iPhones and iPads, and the Cupertino tech giant will soon be releasing Mac devices with desktop-grade custom chipsets.

Google, Amazon, and Apple have been developing their own chipsets for quite some time now, and Facebook will soon be joining their ranks. Google will be releasing its own hardware in the form of the third-generation Pixel devices later this year. The previous Pixel devices were built by LG and HTC, and with Google putting its efforts into building custom SoCs, we can expect better optimization and powerful hardware.

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