Meta’s AI Spending Spree is Helping Make Its Quest Headsets More Expensive
The rising costs of RAM and other computing components are pushing up the price of Meta’s Quest VR headsets. The company says that starting on April 19, prices will increase by $50–$100 (about 12–20 percent). In announcing that price increase on Thursday, the company cited “the global surge in the price of critical components—specifically memory chips—[that] is impacting almost every category of consumer electronics, including VR.”
But unlike many other tech companies that have been pushed into similar price increases in recent months due to an ongoing RAM shortage and GPU hikes, Meta’s own spending priorities are at least partly to blame for the rising prices of those components. The company’s recent hard pivot to the “AI superintelligence” race has directly contributed to the conditions that are now making its own Quest headsets more expensive.
Spending like a drunk sailor
In January, Meta announced plans to spend $115 billion to $135 billion on capital expenditures this year, up significantly from $72 billion in 2025 and just $28 billion as recently as 2023. The vast majority of that investment is going into AI infrastructure, including a recent $21 billion in new investment in data center company CoreWeave (in addition to $14.2 billion originally committed) and an additional $10 billion recently committed to a planned El Paso data center (up from $1.5 billion initially).
Key Takeaways
- The global surge in the price of critical components, specifically memory chips, is impacting almost every category of consumer electronics, including VR.
- Meta’s recent hard pivot to the “AI superintelligence” race has contributed to the conditions that are now making its own Quest headsets more expensive.
- Meta plans to spend $115 billion to $135 billion on capital expenditures this year, with a significant portion of that investment going into AI infrastructure.
Originally published at arstechnica.com. Curated by AI Maestro.
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