It is now quite clear that Facebook takes the leadership of virtual and augmented reality seriously. Further reinforcing Facebook’s bet that immersive technologies are the future of computing, a report by The information says the company currently employs around 10,000 people to work in AR / VR.
The report states that this figure is responsible for an impressive one fifth of Facebook’s total workforce worldwide. According to information obtained by Statista, the company has doubled in team size since 2017, reaching about 58,000 employees in 2020.
Granted, the report does not go into details; the 10k number probably reflects a wide range of devices and services outside of Oculus Quest, its Project Aria AR efforts and its Ray-Ban smartglasses built in cooperation with Luxottica.
Teams dedicated to research, development, manufacturing, communications, public relations – all the pitfalls required of a company the size of Facebook can probably be at stake in the 10,000 count. This would also include projects like Portal, its AI development and even virtual reality game studios like Sanzaru, Beat Games and Ready at Dawn.
Assuming it is true, none of this is really a surprise. Facebook has been far ahead with its intentions to own the space since the acquisition of Oculus in 2014 for $ 2 billion. Following the subsequent incorporation of her VR Oculus brand into the mothership, she opened Facebook Reality Labs, the company’s AR / VR skunkworks. At the time of this writing, Facebook Reality Labs had more than 800 open job openings, covering augmented reality, virtual reality, brain-computer interfaces and artificial intelligence.