• News

Facebook (META) & Qualcomm (QCOM) sign multi-year deal to make custom VR chips

Qualcomm has agreed to a deal with Meta to create custom virtual reality chips to aid in the delivery of metaverse experiences.

TJ Denzer

September 2, 2022 9:50 AM

Image via Meta

1

Qualcomm and Meta (formerly Facebook) have enjoyed a relationship together on new hardware, products, and technology for a while. It is, after all, a Qualcomm chip powering the Meta Quest 2. It looks like that partnership is about to deepen too. Qualcomm has announced that it has signed a multi-year deal with Meta to create custom VR chips for Meta’s products in support of developing and launching metaverse experiences.

Qualcomm and Meta announced the signing of their recent deal in a press release on September 2, 2022. According to the deal, Qualcomm is partnering with Meta for the next few years to develop spatial computing technology related to VR and metaverse applications.

“By partnering with Meta, we are bringing together two of the world’s metaverse leaders to revolutionize the future of computing for billions of people in the coming years,” said Qualcomm president and CEO Cristiano Amon. “Building off our joint leadership in XR, this agreement will allow our companies to deliver best-in-class devices and experiences to transform how we work, play, learn, create and connect in a fully realized metaverse.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was also thrilled to continue partnership with Qualcomm, given the success of the Meta Quest 2 and the company’s investment in further VR and metaverse development, including the tease of new products in the coming years.

“We're working with Qualcomm Technologies on customized virtual reality chipsets -- powered by Snapdragon XR platforms and technology -- for our future roadmap of Quest products,” said Zuckerberg. “As we continue to build more advanced capabilities and experiences for virtual and augmented reality, it has become more important to build specialized technologies to power our future VR headsets and other devices. Unlike mobile phones, building virtual reality brings novel, multi-dimensional challenges in spatial computing, cost, and form factor. These chipsets will help us keep pushing virtual reality to its limits and deliver awesome experiences.”

With this in mind, it looks like Qualcomm and Meta will go pretty much hand in hand on VR development for the foreseeable future. Stay tuned as we await the reveal of new products and technology that will likely result from this deal.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.