Qualcomm Will Produce Virtual Reality Chips For Meta

Meta Platforms Inc announced an agreement with Qualcomm Inc to produce custom chipsets for its Quest virtual reality (VR) devices on Friday at a consumer electronics conference in Berlin. Both companies' engineering and product teams will collaborate to produce the chips, which will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon platforms, according to a statement.

The agreement demonstrates Meta's reliance on Qualcomm's technology, even as it attempts to develop custom silicon for its virtual, augmented, and mixed reality devices. “Unlike mobile phones, building VR brings novel multidimensional challenges in spatial computing, cost, and form factor,” Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg stated in a video message.

“We are still in the early stages of the metaverse and this sort of deep technical integration will help VR move towards being a multifunctional computing platform,”  he explained.

Meta has been heavily investing in technologies such as pass-through goggles and augmented reality glasses in order to bring Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse, a concept involving an immersive set of digital worlds, to life. It has relied on Qualcomm chips for years in its VR devices, including its latest Quest2 headset.

The chipsets developed as part of the collaboration will not be exclusive to Meta, but will be optimised specifically for Quest's system specifications, according to Meta spokesperson Tyler Yee. The deal's financial terms were not disclosed. According to Yee, the agreement only applies to VR devices, and Meta will continue to work on developing some of its own silicon solutions.