Meta to Lay off Employees in Metaverse Silicon Unit – News18

NEW YORK: Meta is planning to put off staff on Wednesday within the unit of its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division targeted on creating customized silicon, two sources acquainted with the matter informed Reuters on Tuesday.

Employees have been knowledgeable of the layoffs in a submit on Meta’s inner dialogue discussion board Workplace on Tuesday. The submit mentioned they’d be notified about their standing with the corporate by early Wednesday morning, one of many sources mentioned.

A Meta spokesperson declined to touch upon the plans. Reuters was not in a position to decide the extent of the cuts to the silicon unit, referred to as Facebook Agile Silicon Team, or FAST.

If the cuts are deep, they might hamper Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s undertaking to construct augmented and digital actuality merchandise enabling entry to a set of immersive digital worlds often called the “metaverse,” significantly the AR glasses that he has predicted “will redefine our relationship with technology.”

The FAST unit, which has roughly 600 staff, labored on creating customized chips to equip Meta’s units to carry out distinctive duties and function extra effectively, differentiating them from others getting into the nascent AR/VR market.

However, Meta has struggled to make chips that may compete with silicon produced by exterior suppliers and has turned to chipmaker Qualcomm to supply chips for its units presently in the marketplace.

A restructuring of FAST has been anticipated for the reason that spring, when Meta employed a brand new government to steer the unit.

A separate chip-making unit in Meta’s infrastructure division targeted on synthetic intelligence work has likewise hit roadblocks. The government overseeing these efforts introduced her departure final week, though Meta has appointed another person to take over her function and proceed these efforts.

Meta presently makes a line of blended actuality headsets referred to as Quest and sensible glasses designed with Ray-Ban eyeglass maker EssilorLuxottica that may stream video and communicate with wearers by means of a brand new AI digital assistant.

It introduced new variations of the sensible glasses and its consumer-oriented Quest headset, Quest 3, at its annual Connect convention final week.

The firm can also be engaged on extra technically difficult and fewer cumbersome AR glasses that look extra like common glasses, together with related sensible watches, in line with one of many sources.

A primary model of that product is ready to be accomplished subsequent yr, though Meta is just not initially planning to make it broadly accessible to customers, the supply mentioned.

Meta has slashed round 21,000 jobs since November of final yr because it has sought to reassure buyers that it was reining in prices amid waning income development, excessive inflation and issues that Reality Labs was shedding an excessive amount of cash.

In a press release in March, Zuckerberg mentioned the majority of this yr’s layoffs would occur within the spring, however that “in a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes.”

(This story has been edited by News18 employees and is revealed from a syndicated news company feed – Reuters)