Meta has abandoned its efforts to develop custom chips for its upcoming AR glasses. The company has been working on this project since 2019 but has now decided to rely on third-party chipmakers like Qualcomm for its AR glasses prototypes.

The custom chip development was part of Meta's Orion project for AR glasses. The company was working on three separate chips: One for the "puck" (a non-wearable processor), one for image recognition within the glasses, and another processor within the glasses. These chips were codenamed Armstrong, Avogadro, and Acropolis, respectively.

The company noted that this decision was made due to ongoing cost-cutting efforts and a shift in business priorities. The company may reveal an "experimental" prototype of the Orion AR glasses this year, possibly at its Connect event for developers in September.

Analyst QuickTake: Qualcomm is a leading manufacturer of chips for XR hardware and has a history of powering Meta’s devices. For example, the Quest 3 headset leverages Qualcomm’s Sanpdragon XR2 chipset, with Meta likely to utilize its new Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset for future mixed reality devices.