Meta has pulled the plug on developing proprietary chips for its AR glasses, opting to use chips from Qualcomm instead. The shift is part of the company's broader efforts to cut costs.
Adopting Qualcomm Technology
Since undertaking the project in 2019, Meta aimed to create custom chips to boost the performance of its AR glasses, known internally as Orion. However, due to financial pressures and strategic adjustments, these plans have been abandoned in favor of Qualcomm's chips for upcoming prototypes and future versions.
Initially, Meta's custom chips were set to be integral to its wearable technology, such as Orion AR glasses and another model under the Apollo project. The hardware division's Silicon team was tasked with creating three specific chips, named Armstrong, Avogadro, and Acropolis, targeting functionalities like image recognition. These developments have now been halted as part of a wider effort to reduce expenses.
Financial Difficulties and Restructuring
Meta's Reality Labs, the unit behind its consumer hardware, has been dealing with substantial financial issues. The unit's latest quarterly report showed $353 million in revenue against a $4.5 billion operating loss. Meta has also enacted large-scale layoffs, significantly impacting the Silicon team. Only a few team members will remain to manage relationships with external suppliers.
Despite these changes, Meta continues to work on other chip designs, including specialized processors for AI workloads in data centers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg still believes in a future where AR and AI glasses become ubiquitous. In April, the company launched its next-gen AI chips (MTIA v2).
The Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chips are designed to optimize the efficiency of training ranking and recommendation models, with an eye towards future applications in generative AI.
