Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder and CEO of Meta, formerly known as Facebook. In 2022, with a fall in ad revenue and Meta’s stock price, Zuckerberg had started a first round of layoffs. He, then, went on to deem 2023 as “The Year Of Efficiency” with plans for more layoffs. And in October 2023, it was reported that a substantial workforce reduction may be on the horizon. This is said to be within the specialized silicon unit of Meta’s Reality Labs division.
The focus of this division is said to be the Metaverse. Meta’s Reality Labs division is said to be dedicated to R&D in the fields of VR and AR. The silicon unit would be a team within Meta that focuses on making custom silicon for hardware needs, in terms of their VR and AR products. This is said to be custom chips for Meta’s Oculus VR headsets. Custom silicon is said to be for optimizing the performance and efficiency of these headsets. The unit is known as FAST: Facebook Agile Silicon Team. It is said to consist of around 600 employees.
It was said that Meta had been facing challenges in producing competitive chips in-house and had opted to collaborate with chipmaker Qualcomm to produce chips for its existing products. But, with the silicon unit of Meta’s Reality Labs facing potential layoffs, the ambition may be put on pause or discarded altogether.
Yep, this may cast a shadow on Zuckerberg’s grand vision of creating augmented and virtual reality products that provide access to immersive virtual worlds: the Metaverse. What’s interesting is that Mark Zuckerberg was said to have changed Facebook’s name to “Meta” to commemorate the Metaverse. Yet, Meta is said to have mixed reality headsets, including the Quest line. It had, also, recently announced smart glasses created in partnership with Ray-Ban’s parent company, EssilorLuxottica.
These smart glasses are said to be equipped with the capability to stream video content and interact with wearers through an AI-powered virtual assistant. The AR glasses are projected to be completed by around 2024, but Meta may not make them widely available to consumers immediately.
So, does this dampen the Metaverse’s ambitions at Meta to go the AI route? It’s said that Meta has shed about 21,000 jobs since November 2022, with the downsizing aimed at reassuring investors. This was said to be in the face of challenges related to declining revenue growth, rising inflation and substantial financial losses within the Reality Labs division.
