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

Credit: Meta Meta’s “future of the Internet” of the recent past. Credit: Meta Meta’s “future of the Internet” of the recent past.

Meta’s partially self-inflicted Quest pricing situation is particularly striking given how recently the company changed its name and threw vast sums of money at its vision for a VR-based metaverse—one it said would form the basis of “the next version of the Internet.” That hasn’t panned out how CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisioned five years ago, though, as $73 billion in cumulative losses for Meta’s VR-focused Reality Labs division can attest.

But while Meta was more or less alone among big tech companies in making significant investments in the metaverse, it’s just one of many companies throwing boatloads of money at the AI revolution. And Meta’s yearslong spending spree on the metaverse pales in comparison to what the company is throwing at AI this year alone.

Still, with Meta reportedly planning spending cuts of up to 30 percent for its metaverse division, it’s clear where the company’s focus lies for the immediate future. So when you look at the rising prices for the VR headsets that now seem to be a waning part of Meta’s focus, just remember that Meta’s own ever-shifting priorities have helped lead us to this point.

The new prices for Meta’s Quest headsets in the US are as follows: