Facebook is planning major expansion in Zurich. The number of employees will be more than doubled from its current level of 80, said Tino Krause, Facebook’s head of operations for Austria, Germany and Switzerland, in an interview with Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper.
Facebook first opened an office in Zurich in 2016, when the internet giant acquired Zurich Eye – a Zurich university project that focuses on visual navigation for machines, enabling them “to see”. This expertise in Zurich is now flowing into the development of the virtual reality headset Oculus Go.
“The Zurich office is a major driver of the company’s capacity to innovate, not least due to its developmental focus on virtual and augment reality. It will continue to gain in significance for us in the future,” Tino Krause said to persoenlich.com. “We want to get even closer to people and are therefore intensifying our commitment in Switzerland.”
According to Tino Krause, the German-speaking area as a whole is becoming ever more important for Facebook. It is “quite decidedly a driver” when it comes to matters of data protection, in particular.
