(Reuters) – American company Facebook on Monday revealed plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union over the next five years. His goal is to advance development called metawares, an online world where people live and communicate in virtual spaces shared.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive officer, praised the company’s significant step towards this idea in recent months.

In September, Facebook offered $ 50 million to build “Metawares”. The project was supported by Fortnight video game makers Roblox Corp and Epic Games.

Previously, the company launched a trial version of a new virtual reality remote work application in which users of the Oculus Quest 2 headset can have meetings with avatars.

Facebook said in July that it was creating a product team to work on “Itavers, part of Facebook reality labs, and its increased reality and virtual reality division”.

“This investment (in new jobs) is a testament to the strength of the European tech sector and the potential of European tech talent,” the company said.

“Europe is very important to Facebook,” he added.