Almost a fifth of Facebook employees are now working on VR and AR

Facebook has nearly 10,000 employees in its division working on augmented reality and virtual reality devices, according to a report in Information based on internal organizational data. This figure means that the Reality Labs division represents almost a fifth of the people working at Facebook globally.

This suggests that Facebook has significantly ramped up its VR and AR efforts. As UploadVR Noted in 2017, the Oculus VR division had over a thousand employees at a time when Facebook’s workforce was 18,770 overall, indicating a percentage somewhere north of five percent.

Since then, Facebook has moved its VR lens away from Oculus Rift-style captive headsets by launching Oculus Quest and Quest 2, which are stand-alone wireless devices that don’t require a PC. The $ 299 Quest 2 was pre-ordered five times as much as its predecessor, with developers seeing increased sales of their existing titles.

“Most of what Facebook does today is… we rely on other people’s platforms,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. Information in an interview this week on Facebook’s VR and AR ambitions. “I think it really makes sense for us to invest deeply to help shape what I think is the next major computing platform, this combination of augmented reality and virtual reality, to make sure it grows out of that. way that basically concerns people. be present with each other and come together.