Meta’s former chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer focuses on climate change

April 11, 2022: -Meta’s former chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, will 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, 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 and resources to working on the climate crisis, both as an early-stage climate tech investor and doubling down on philanthropic work to advance early-stage scientific research,” Schroepfer wrote 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 mention 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 that takes photos of the earth once every day with satellites. 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.