Metaverse Silicon Unit Employees Will Be Furloughed

NEW YORK: According to two persons familiar with the situation, Meta is intending to terminate staff on Wednesday in the department of its metaverse-focused Reality Labs business responsible for developing bespoke silicon.

On Tuesday, a post on the internal discussion board Workplace of Meta alerted staff members of the layoffs. According to one of the people, the post said that they will be informed of their employment status with the organization by early Wednesday morning.

The intentions were not discussed further by a Meta representative. The size of the cutbacks to the Facebook Agile Silicon Team, or FAST, silicon unit could not be ascertained by Reuters.

If the cuts are severe, they might interfere with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to develop augmented and virtual reality products that give users access to the “metaverse,” a collection of immersive virtual worlds, especially the AR glasses that, in his words, “will redefine our relationship with technology.”

The FAST section, which employs around 600 people, works on creating specialized chips to provide Meta’s products the ability to carry out certain functions and run more effectively, setting them apart from rivals joining the fledgling AR/VR sector.

However, Meta has had trouble producing chips that can compete with silicon made by outside suppliers and has enlisted Qualcomm to create processors for its current product line.

Since the spring, when Meta appointed a new CEO to head the division, a restructure of FAST has been anticipated.

Roadblocks have also been encountered by an independent artificial intelligence-focused chip-making unit under Meta’s infrastructure business. The CEO in charge of such initiatives gave notice of her resignation last week, but Meta has named a replacement to go on with those initiatives in her place.

Current products from Meta include the Quest series of mixed reality headsets and the EssilorLuxottica and Ray-Ban smart glasses, which can stream video and communicate with users through an AI virtual assistant.

At its annual Connect conference this week, it unveiled updated iterations of the smart glasses and its consumer-focused Quest headgear, Quest 3.

According to one of the sources, the corporation is also developing more complex and thin AR glasses that resemble ordinary spectacles, along with related smart watches.

The source said that a first version of that product is anticipated to be finished by the end of the year, but Meta does not originally want to make it readily accessible to users.

Since November of last year, Meta has cut over 21,000 positions in an effort to persuade investors that it is controlling expenses in the face of slowing revenue growth, increasing inflation, and worries that Reality Labs is losing too much money.

The majority of this year’s layoffs, according to a statement from Mark Zuckerberg in March, will take place in the spring, but “in a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes.”