Horacio Villalobos - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
- Oculus VR cofounder Palmer Luckey was full of praise for Apple's mixed-reality headset.
- The billionaire tweeted his views on the headset ahead of an expected debut in June.
- Apple has been quiet on its next big thing at a time when its rivals are shifting to focus on AI.
The original designer of Meta's VR offering, Oculus, says Apple's much-rumored rival metaverse headset is "so good."
Palmer Luckey, a billionaire who cofounded Oculus VR in 2012 and now leads defense-tech startup Anduril, made the bold claim in a tweet on Sunday, suggesting he had tried out the iPhone maker's next-generation hardware.
Apple has been widely expected to debut a mixed-reality headset, which would mark the start of its push into the metaverse, though the company has not publicly announced anything about the headset.
Industry watchers are expecting the tech giant to debut its metaverse project in June at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), particularly after the company made a quiet announcement about its iPad last week that would typically be saved for the conference.
Apple's shift to metaverse-linked tech is a risky move at a time when some companies that have made bets on VR and augmented-reality technologies have quietly paused their projects. Others have started to pour resources into AI instead.
Oculus was acquired in 2014 by Facebook before the social-media company changed its corporate name to Meta. The technology has struggled to gain traction for its metaverse vision and it was announced in March that it was slashing the prices of its VR headsets amid poor sales. Quest Pro, the top model in Meta's range, was cut in price from $1499.99 to $999.99.
Though Meta said its goal was to create hardware that's affordable, the price drops reflect the steep cost of building metaverse technologies. Reality Labs, the Meta division that's responsible for the headsets, lost $13.7 billion in 2022, according to public filings.
Meta is making AI its single biggest investment as it pursues its "year of efficiency," a post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in March. Apple has remained relatively quiet on AI by comparison, with Tim Cook emphasizing the need to be "deliberate and thoughtful."
Apple and Luckey did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment made outside of normal working hours.