Inside Facebook’s Mysterious Building 8: The Mission to Advance Communication Technologies

Hidden in plain sight next to a nondescript dental office in Menlo Park, California, stands Building 8, an unremarkable beige edifice easily overlooked. But don’t mistake its outward simplicity—the brick-and-mortar structure across the street from Facebook’s main campus holds the social network’s grandest visions and ambitious undertakings.

In the tech industry, the kind of work happening inside Building 8 is referred to as “moonshots,” illustrating projects with potentially groundbreaking implications that could not only redefine Facebook’s trajectory but revolutionize how we all communicate.

Introduced at last year’s F8 developer conference by Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Building 8—notably named for the number of letters in ‘Facebook’—is the creative nucleus of the company’s ambitious 10-year strategic plan. Zuckerberg enticed Regina Dugan, the former head of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group, to helm this pioneering initiative.

While concrete details about Building 8’s mission were initially sparse, it was clear they were focused on “seemingly impossible” hardware developments in pivotal areas such as virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and connectivity. The intention was to produce products that could be efficiently manufactured and shipped at scale. To accomplish these aims, Building 8 amassed a powerhouse crew of hardware veterans from industry titans like Apple, Motorola and Google.

This veil of intrigue was partially lifted when the members of Building 8 unveiled their first two groundbreaking projects earlier this week. The first, a ‘brain-to-computer interface,’ aspires to translate thoughts directly to a computer, while the second puts forth innovative technology that would allow us to “hear” or receive language through vibrations on our skin.

Dugan, who previously led Darpa, the Defence Department’s renowned tech division, made her ambitions clear, “If I’m doing my job well, we should deliver things people didn’t know to ask for,” she shared. “However, there’s the risk of failure. But that’s precisely the price you pay for the honor of working on something new.”

From a company known for its Like button, status updates, and shared photos reaching nearly 2 billion people each month, such boundary-pushing technological endeavors may seem unusual. But keeping in line with Silicon Valley’s continuous pursuit for the next big thing and the fact that Facebook’s future hinges on innovative moonshot projects, these ‘out-of-the-box’ efforts give the social networking giant a major competitive advantage.

Not only can these technologies lead to new business opportunities, but the work and energy put into their Research and Development (R&D) can often be harnessed for current, real-world applications. As Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, asserts, moonshot projects like those pursued by Building 8 also “attract and retain smart employees,” which in itself is a significant advantage in the competitive tech landscape.

As Zuckerberg projected in a Q&A on Facebook two years ago, Building 8’s brain-to-computer project is born directly from his vision that one day, “we’ll be able to send full, rich thoughts to each other directly using technology.” He endeavored that such advancements would enable us to share experiences with friends instantly, heralding a future where “You’ll just be able to think of something, and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too, if you’d like.”

As more details about Building 8’s progress surface, we’re left eager with anticipation to find out how these developments will shape not just the future of Facebook but of communication as we know it.