• Meta announced in April that it would lay off thousands of employees across its major facilities.
• According to an internal Workplace post, the company plans to cut jobs in its Reality Labs division’s silicon division.

In April of this year, social media giant Meta announced that announced The company plans to lay off thousands of people in the coming months at nearly all of its major facilities, including its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs. As if to keep that promise, the company is planning a series of layoffs in the silicon division of its Reality Labs division, according to people familiar with the development.

The company informed employees of the decision in a post on its internal discussion forum Workplace. The post also said employees will be notified of the situation at the company by early Wednesday morning.

The scale of the job cuts in the silicon division is not yet known. If the layoffs are significant, they could negatively impact the company’s efforts to build AR and VR products that enable access to the Metaverse.

Meta has already created and announced a large amount of Metaverse-oriented hardware. For example, the company makes a line of mixed reality (MR) headsets called Quest. It also partnered with Ray-Ban manufacturer EssilorLuxottica to design smart glasses that can talk to the wearer and stream videos through a new AI virtual assistant. The company is also reportedly working on several other Metaverse-oriented products.

Almost a week ago, the company announced The company’s annual event, Meta Connect 2023, showed off several products, including a new version of its headset (Quest 3) and smart glasses.

The 600-employee silicon division, or Facebook Agile Silicon Team (FAST), focuses on developing custom chips that power the virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) hardware manufactured by Meta’s Reality Labs division. Masu. But the company has struggled to make chips that can compete with chips made by outside providers. That’s why the company turned to Qualcomm for its currently available devices.

see next: More than 11,000 Meta employees and hundreds of Salesforce employees handed out pink slips.

Are layoffs part of Meta’s cost-cutting measures?

Meta has already laid off about 21,000 people since November 2022, likely due to declining revenue and profits, high inflation, economic uncertainty, and Reality Labs losing too much money. This is likely to reassure investors that the company is keeping costs under control, amid concerns that the company may be losing money. As a result, more layoffs are expected this year, as the company announced in April. Additionally, a restructuring of FAST has been expected since the spring, when new executives were hired to lead the department.

Therefore, the ongoing layoffs may be part of the company’s cost-cutting and restructuring measures.

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