Mark Zuckerberg yesterday discussed ways to deepen Meta Platforms Inc’s strategic alliance on extended-reality (XR) technology with LG Electronics Inc, during his latest stop on a tour of Asia that has taken the billionaire founder from Tokyo to Seoul.
Zuckerberg and LG Electronics CEO William Cho spent two hours going over business strategies for XR devices, considered a next phase after early virtual and augmented reality devices such as Meta’s Quest headset.
The pair also discussed Meta’s large language models and the potential to build artificial intelligence (AI) into consumer devices, LG said in a statement.
Photo: LG Electronics via AP
The South Korean company mentioned in particular how Meta’s platform could dovetail with LG’s content and TV business to create a “distinctive ecosystem.”
Zuckerberg is in Seoul after spending several days on a ski trip with his family in Japan. The Meta CEO met Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Tuesday and discussed a broad range of topics, including the status of AI’s technological advancement and the risk surrounding generative AI, top Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters yesterday.
AI and Quest have featured heavily on Zuckerberg’s agenda so far, given Meta’s accelerating investment into AI and growing competition in hardware from the likes of Apple Inc’s Vision Pro. In South Korea, he is expected to meet up with Samsung Electronics Co, a longtime rival of LG that has also collaborated with Meta on virtual reality (VR).
Zuckerberg, who arrived in Seoul late on Tuesday, is attracting outsized attention during an Asian tour that has largely remained under wraps.
The billionaire is returning to the city as Meta, whose businesses range from Facebook to Instagram, races to compete in AI with powerful competitors from OpenAI and Microsoft Corp to Alphabet Inc. It is an undertaking that requires huge amounts of Nvidia Corp chips and investment to build what Zuckerberg has dubbed a “massive compute infrastructure.”
Meta remains far and away the industry leader in VR headsets — holding nearly half the market, according to Counterpoint Research — but is losing money on that venture and now has to contend with Apple’s latest device.
It is unclear if mainstream consumers would ever fully embrace the products.
Zuckerberg’s next stop is India, where he is slated to attend the prewedding celebrations of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s youngest son. The three-day festivities, which are to start tomorrow, are expected to draw celebrities in business, technology and entertainment.
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