Facebook hires a head of chip development from Google

FILE- This March 28, 2018, file photo shows the Facebook logo at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Facebook says it will stop spending money to fight a proposed California ballot initiative aimed at giving consumers more control over their data. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Facebook Inc has sent another signal that it’s serious about building its own semiconductors, joining Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google, and Amazon.com Inc in trying to make its own custom chips. 

The social-networking giant this month hired Shahriar Rabii to be a vice-president and its head of silicon. Rabii previously worked at Google, where he helped lead the team in charge of building chips for the company’s devices, including the Pixel smartphone’s custom Visual Core chip, according to his LinkedIn profile. He’ll work under Andrew Bosworth, the company’s head of virtual reality and augmented reality, according to people familiar with the matter.