Meta has Apple to thank for giving its annual VR conference added sizzle this year
Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer of Facebook, speaks during Meta Connect event at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California on September 27, 2023.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
At Meta’s annual Connect conference this week focused on virtual reality and the metaverse, one word was on everyone’s lips: Apple.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was enthusiastic in debuting his company’s Quest 3 VR headset, which starts at $499 and will begin shipping in October. His company touted the growth of its VR app store — Quest Store — which has generated $2 billion in sales since its debut in 2019, up from the $1.5 billion the company announced last year during the conference.
The big difference this year from the event in 2022 is that attendees have a much clearer picture of Apple’s upcoming entry into the VR market.
The iPhone maker in June announced its Vision Pro mixed-reality headset at an eyepopping price of $3,499 when it goes on sale next year. While it’s Apple’s first major foray into VR, the company’s longtime dominance in premium consumer devices and its winning reputation in hardware has created a buzz that was missing from Meta’s prior industry events.
VR and mixed reality are expected to remain niche markets for years to come, but conversations with nearly a dozen attendees who gathered at Meta’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters this week show the tone is changing for developers and VR companies regarding the potential for an expanding industry.
“There’s curiosity for sure with Apple entering the market,” said Tom Symonds, CEO of the UK-based VR firm Immerse. “Apple has always been able to marry the hardware and the software in a seamless way.”
Prior to Apple’s Vision Pro announcement, the VR industry was going through a bit of an identity crisis, with venture capitalists pulling back their investments alongside the drop-off in Web3 and related crypto projects. Meanwhile, Meta has been losing billions of dollars a quarter building its vision of a metaverse, and Zuckerberg has shown no interest in slowing down, frustrating many Wall Street investors who see only mounting costs.
Apple CEO Tim Cook stands next to the new Apple Vision Pro headset.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Even though Apple’s product won’t go on sale for months and it’s unclear how many people will want it or be able to buy it, the company’s entry has given a sense of legitimacy to some of Meta’s efforts.
In addition to showing off its latest headset this week, Meta debuted the newest version of its Ray-Ban smart glasses, developed with EssilorLuxottica. The new glasses, which will cost $299 when they’re available to purchase on Oct. 17, use Meta’s artificial intelligence software via a smartphone so people can identify landmarks or translate signs when looking at various objects.
‘Pushing the bar’
It would have been a “big loss of confidence” if Meta stopped investing heavily to push the VR market forward, said Aneesh Kulkarni, chief technology officer of the VR training firm Strivr.
“Meta is pushing the bar, and who has the money to push the bar?” Kulkarni said.
He added that while $2 billion of app store sales “may not sound like a lot compared to the Apple store,” it’s a big and important number. Apple has a giant marketplace — $1.1 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2022 — because of the popularity of iPhone and iPad apps.
Josette Seitz, a mixed-reality developer for the social impact company Baltu Technologies, said Apple could have an advantage courting businesses that already use its products, like those that employ iPads to help conduct maintenance and other related services. A company that currently supplies field workers with iPads for inspections or similar tasks could conceivably make the easy transition to the more immersive Vision Pro because of the devices’ interoperability, she said.
At its high price point, the Vision Pro will likely be more of a product for businesses, Seitz said. Regardless, it’s important to have more entrants in the market.
“There shouldn’t just be one company,” she said. “We can’t have this be a monopoly system.”
Gaspar Ferreiro, a developer with the VR firm Coal Car Studios, called the Vision Pro’s price “insane” and said Apple is taking a “big gamble.”
“Enterprises will absolutely take the gamble,” Ferreiro said, noting some businesses will splurge on Apple devices because of the company’s reputation and prestige.
Meta still faces its own challenges. The company has struggled to bring VR into the mainstream despite a yearslong head start, and Ferreiro isn’t sure that the Quest 3’s improvements over the Quest 2, which is $200 cheaper, will be enough to win new customers who aren’t industry insiders or developers.
“The general consumer is probably going to be faced with a conundrum, do I spend another $200 on this other device?” Ferreiro said.
One of the Quest 3’s biggest improvements over the previous version is its so-called “passthrough” feature, which converts a person’s field of vision into a digital format, thus allowing computer visuals to be overlaid on to the physical world. Looking at physical surroundings using the Quest 2 proved to be a blurry experience that lacked color, but with the Quest 3 it’s much clearer and should be more enjoyable to use.
For developers, Ferreiro said, that translates into the ability to create more compelling content and visually attractive experiences that integrate the physical and digital worlds.
Jeffrey Morin, CEO of the Litesport VR fitness service, said the Quest 3 is priced “just outside of my comfort zone for, like, me buying my kid a Christmas gift.”
But he agrees that improved passthrough is very valuable and was crucial for the company’s upcoming mixed-reality app it created for Xponential Fitness that will let users work out with real personal trainers who can be virtually beamed into their living rooms.
As far as working with Apple, Morin said Litesport will look for ways to develop for the Vision Pro as it evolves and the price potentially drops to between $1,000 to $1,500 in the future. Initially, the price is too high and the Vision Pro will require users to wear a battery pack, creating an added nuisance during a workout.
The advantage Apple offers is a base of customers who “are going to be way more likely to pay for a subscription,” providing a recurring source of revenue, he said. Based on Morin’s experience thus far, most current Quest users are gamers who are more accustomed to making one-time app purchases.
Morin said that even though Apple’s product isn’t out yet, he noticed an increase in the number of people using Litesports’ VR fitness apps once it was announced, underscoring the VR community’s overall excitement.
“They fired up their headsets and they’re, like, let me see what’s out there again,” Morin said.
Ultimately, Apple’s move into VR is proof that it’s not just an ambitious Facebook side project.
“It’s not like Mark’s little toy anymore,” Morin said. “Now it’s everyone’s.”
WATCH: The smart glasses unveiling was a ‘big yawn’ and Meta knows it
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Lisa Su, chair and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), during a Bloomberg Television interview in San Francisco, California, US, on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
AMD CEO Lisa Su said on Tuesday that the company’s overall revenue growth would expand to about 35% per year over the next three to five years, driven by “insatiable” demand for artificial intelligence chips.
Su said that much of that would be captured by the company’s AI data center business, which it expects to grow at about 80% per year over the same time period, on track to hit tens of billions of dollars of sales by 2027.
“This is what we see as our potential given the customer traction, both with the announced customers, as well as customers that are currently working very closely with us,” Su told analysts.
Ultimately, Su said that AMD could be able to achieve “double-digit” share in the data center AI chip market over the next three to five years.
AMD shares fell 3% in extended trading.
The AI chip market is currently dominated by Nvidia, which has over 90% of the market share, according to some estimates, and which has given the company a market cap of over $4.6 trillion, versus AMD’s roughly $387 billion valuation.
AMD is holding its first financial analyst day since 2022, as the company has found itself at the center of a boom in data center spending for AI.
While companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in total on graphics processing unit (GPU) chips to build and power artificial intelligence applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, they are also looking for alternatives to increase capacity and control costs. AMD is the only other major developer of GPUs aside from Nvidia.
In October, AMD announced a partnership with OpenAI in which it would sell the AI startup billions of dollars in its Instinct AI chips over multiple years, starting with enough chips in 2026 to use 1 gigawatt of power.
As part of the deal, OpenAI could end up taking a 10% stake in the chipmaker. Su also highlighted long-term deals with Oracle and Meta on Tuesday.
AMD shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025.
OpenAI is also helping AMD set up its next-generation systems based around its Instinct MI400X AI chips, which ship next year.
AMD has said that its chips will be able to be assembled into a “rack-scale” system where 72 of its chips work together as one, which is essential for running the largest AI models.
If AMD succeeds at its rack, it will catch up with Nvidia’s AI chips, which have been offered in rack-scale systems for three product generations.
Su said that the company now sees the total market for AI data center parts and systems hitting $1 trillion per year in 2030, representing 40% annual growth per year. AMD reported $5 billion in AI chip sales in its fiscal 2024.
That’s up from the company’s previous forecast of a $500 billion market in 2028 for AI chips. But the updated AMD figure also includes central processors (CPU), an important kind of chip that sits at the heart of a computer, but isn’t a pure AI accelerator like the GPUs made by Nvidia and AMD.
AMD’s Epyc CPUs are still the company’s most important product by sales. It primarily competes with Intel and some smaller Arm-based processors in the CPU market. AMD also makes chips for game consoles, networking parts, and other devices.
On Tuesday, although AMD focused much of its focus on its growing AI business, it told shareholders that its older businesses were growing too.
“The other message that we want to leave you with today is every other part of our business is firing on all cylinders, and that’s actually a very nice place to be,” Su said.
Technology
CoreWeave CEO responds to data center delays as stock plunges. Core Scientific shares fall
CoreWeave shares sank 13% on Tuesday after CEO Mike Intrator addressed delays at a third-party data center developer that hit full-year guidance in its latest earnings report.
“Quite frankly, every single part of this quarter went exactly as we planned, except for one delay at a singular data center,” Intrator told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday.
He then clarified that a “singular data center provider” is more accurate.
“Some people might think it’s one complex, but when I go over the numbers, we’re talking about multiple places,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said. “And it just so happens that the places are all connected to an outfit called Core Scientific that you tried to buy.”
Cramer noted delays at complexes in Texas, Oklahoma and North Carolina.
Intrator said the companies have been working together on infrastructure for a long time a would continue work to bring it online. He did not directly confirm that Core Scientific is the third-party provider.
CoreWeave tried to acquire Core Scientific for $9 billion earlier this year. Core Scientific shareholders voted against the proposed deal. Core Scientific shares sank 7% Tuesday.
During CoreWeave’s quarterly earnings call on Monday, JPMorgan Securities analyst Mark Murphy asked if the delay was related to Core Scientific, but Intrator declined to name the company. At another point in the call, the CEO suggested that just one data center, not multiple sites, were affected.
“There was a problem at one data center that’s impacting us, but there are 41 data centers in our portfolio,” Intrator said.
At a different point in the call, CoreWeave’s CFO Nitin Agrawal said the delays stem from “a single provider, data center provider partner.”
When reached for comment about how many sites were affected, CoreWeave did not provide a number and pointed to Intrator’s statements on the earnings call and during his “Squawk on the Street” interview.
CoreWeave, which provides infrastructure for artificial intelligence companies, reported third-quarter results on Monday that showed $1.36 billion in revenue for the period, up 134% from $583.9 million a year ago. But CoreWeave now sees 2025 revenue coming in between $5.05 billion and $5.15 billion, below the average analyst estimate of $5.29 billion.
Intrator told CNBC on Tuesday that CoreWeave has teams of employees working with contractors and Core Scientific at those sites “every single day” to get things back on track.
“It became apparent to us in Q3 that there were delays at the facility,” Intrator said. “CoreWeave responded by deploying our own boots on the ground to ensure that everything was being done in order to move those facilities along as quickly as possible.”
Intrator told analysts on Monday that the delays would not affect its backlog or get the full value from contracts.
Core Scientific did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CoreWeave has been on a deal-making blitz as big tech companies and AI startups race to build out their computing infrastructure.
The company announced in September that it agreed to provide Meta with $14.2 billion of AI cloud infrastructure, just days after expanding its contract with OpenAI to $22.4 billion.
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