By Katie Paul
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Meta is planning to lay off employees on Wednesday in the unit of its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division focused on creating custom silicon, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
Employees were informed of the layoffs in a post on Meta's internal discussion forum Workplace on Tuesday. The post said they would be notified about their status with the company by early Wednesday morning, one of the sources said.
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the plans. Reuters was not able to determine the extent of the cuts to the silicon unit, called Facebook Agile Silicon Team, or FAST, which has roughly 600 employees, according to the other source.
The FAST unit is tasked with developing custom chips to power the augmented and virtual reality hardware produced by Meta's Reality Labs division.
Meta currently makes a line of mixed reality headsets called Quest and smart glasses designed with Ray-Ban eyeglass maker EssilorLuxottica that can stream video and speak with wearers through a new artificial intelligence virtual assistant.
It announced new versions of the smart glasses and its consumer-oriented Quest headset, Quest 3, at its annual Connect conference last week.
The company is also working on augmented reality glasses capable of projecting virtual objects onto see-through lenses, along with associated smart watches, according to one of the sources.
However, Meta has struggled to make chips that can compete with silicon produced by external providers and has turned to chipmaker Qualcomm for devices currently on the market, including both the Quest headsets and the Ray-Ban glasses.
(Reporting by Katie PaulEditing by Chris Reese and Nick Zieminski)
