Meta to lay off staff in AR-VR labs: Report

SAN FRANCISCO: Meta is reportedly planning to lay off an unknown number of employees from its metaverse-driven Reality Labs division.

Employees have been informed about the impending layoffs on Wednesday (US time) via a post on Meta’s internal discussion forum Workplace, according to Reuters, citing sources. The job cuts in the silicon unit called Facebook Agile Silicon Team (FAST), which has around 600 employees, could hamper Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) dream. Meta is banking upon its big-time foray into metaverse, with plans to invest $10 billion over the coming years.

However, the company has reportedly struggled to make chips for its AR-VR headsets that can compete with silicon produced by third-party providers. Meta lost a whopping $13.7 billion in operating losses for Reality Labs for 2022, giving its AR-VR and Metaverse dream a huge jolt.

Within the Reality Labs segment, Q4 revenue was $727 million, down 17 per cent due to lower Quest 2 sales. More than a year after Zuckerberg announced his metaverse project, internal documents had revealed that the company was grappling with “glitchy technology, uninterested users and a lack of clarity about what it will take to succeed”.

In October last year, a key long-term investor in Meta said that the social network needs to stop spending too much on metaverse to get its “mojo back”.