Head of Facebook's secretive hardware unit to step down

"I will be leaving Facebook to focus on building and leading a new endeavor," Dugan wrote on Facebook.

Earlier this year, Facebook provided a peek into the hardware division, called Building 8, revealing it was studying ways for people to communicate by thought and touch.

Although any hardware rollouts from the unit are years away, potential products could help the social media giant lower its heavy reliance on advertising revenue.

Dugan, a former chief of the Pentagon's research arm, has also led a similar hardware group at Alphabet Inc's Google.

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar)