Bitcoins <\/p>\n
The rising costs of RAM and other computing components<\/a> are pushing up the price of Meta\u2019s Quest VR headsets, which the company says will increase by $50\u2013$100 (about 12\u201320 percent) starting on April 19. In announcing that price increase on Thursday<\/a>, the company cited the \u201cglobal surge in the price of critical components\u2014specifically memory chips\u2014[that] is impacting almost every category of consumer electronics, including VR.\u201d<\/p>\n But unlike many<\/a> of the other<\/a> tech companies<\/a> that have been pushed<\/a> into similar price increases<\/a> in recent months<\/a>, Meta\u2019s own spending priorities are at least partly to blame for the rising prices of those components. The company\u2019s recent hard pivot to the \u201cAI superintelligence\u201d race<\/a> has directly contributed to the conditions that are now making its own Quest headsets more expensive.<\/p>\n In January, Meta announced that it plans to spend $115 billion to $135 billion<\/a> 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<\/a> (in addition to $14.2 billion originally committed) and an additional $10 billion recently committed to a planned El Paso data center<\/a> (up from $1.5 billion initially).<\/p>\n Meta\u2019s AI spending makes up a decent chunk of the $630 billion in total AI infrastructure investment pledged industry-wide for 2026, according to CNBC<\/a>. And a large part of that spending is going directly into RAM- and storage-hungry GPUs and data centers, in turn leading to the very component supply crunch that is forcing Meta to raise prices on Quest headsets.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nBitcoins Spending like a drunk sailor<\/h2>\n