Meta's AI spending spree is helping make its Quest headsets more expensive

Meta's relentless push to build artificial intelligence infrastructure is now rippling through its consumer hardware division, forcing the company to raise prices on its Quest virtual reality headsets as competition for scarce chips intensifies. The semiconductor shortage, driven by tech giants' race to secure chips for data centers and AI training, reveals an uncomfortable truth about the AI boom: the costs are starting to bleed into the products people actually buy. For Meta, the world's largest social media company, it means choosing between absorbing losses on its hardware ambitions or passing the burden directly to consumers already skeptical about virtual reality's value.

Ars Technica AI·1d ago