Facebook former CTO Mike Schroepfer to focus on climate change

Facebook’s former chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, is going to devote his time to fighting climate change.

In September, Schroepfer announced he would be stepping down from his role to a part-time position, to be replaced as CTO by Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who was the head of Facebook’s hardware division. Facebook rebranded the company as Meta last fall.

On Thursday, Schroepfer announced with a Twitter post that he had “officially transitioned” from the CTO of Meta to a Senior Fellow role, where he will continue to advise projects, most specifically related to artificial intelligence.

“Outside Meta I’ll devote more of my time an resources to working on the climate crisis, both as an early stage climate tech investor, and by doubling down on philanthropic work to advance early-stage scientific research,” Schroepfer wrote on Twitter.

As an example, Schroepfer pointed to a project studying how the ocean can be used to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at scale.

“There are few places where tech can play a bigger role in creating a better future,” Schroepfer said on Twitter.

When Schroepfer announced via a Facebook post that he was stepping down from his post as the CTO of the Meta, he did not make any mention of his intentions to move towards climate change.

Another prominent Meta executive — Chris Cox, the social media company’s head of product, who left the company in 2019 and then was brought back as Facebook was riled in turmoil — has also worked on climate change issues when he was outside of Zuckerberg’s office.

Cox served as an advisor to Planet, a San Francisco company takes photos of the earth once every day with satellites, and he worked with Watershed, another San Francisco start-up that built software that can be used by businesses trying to get their operations to zero carbon emissions.