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Meta Platforms Inc. has signed an agreement that chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. will make its own chipsets for its Quest virtual reality (VR) devices, the companies announced at the consumer electronics conference in Berlin on Friday.
The two companies’ engineering and product teams will work together to produce chips powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platforms, they said in a statement.
The deal shows the dependence of Meta, until last year known as Facebook, on Qualcomm technology, even as it seeks to develop its own silicon for its virtual, augmented and mixed reality devices.
“Unlike mobile phones, building VR brings new multidimensional challenges in spatial computing, cost and form factor,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video message.
“We’re still in the early stages of the metaversion, and this kind of deep technical integration will help VR move toward a multi-functional computing platform,” he said.
Meta is investing heavily in technologies such as pass-through glasses and augmented reality glasses as it seeks to bring Zuckerberg’s vision of the Metaverse to life, a concept involving an immersive set of digital worlds.
For years, it has relied on Qualcomm chips for its VR devices, including its latest Quest2 headset.
The chipsets produced in the collaboration will not be exclusive to Meta, but will be optimized specifically for the Quest’s system specifications, Meta spokesman Tyler Yee told Reuters.
The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The deal only covers VR devices, Yee said, and Meta will continue to work on developing some of its own silicon solutions.
“There may be situations where we use off-the-shelf silicon or work with industry partners to customize while exploring our own new silicon solutions. There may also be scenarios where we use partner and proprietary solutions in the same product,” said Yee.
