If the product turns out great they might buy it as an aqui-hire.
What has Facebook gained from their purchase of Oculus? At the time I thought it was a pretty shrewd move by Facebook but six years later I'm not sure they got much for the $2 billion they spent.
Judging by the demos[1] they've shown and changes they've made to the Oculus software like homes, it seems like their long term goal is for it to be the basis of a google glass like system that's more environmentally aware and collecting lots of environmental mapping data for FB, and a VR facetime/The matrix but with Xbox Live avatars-ey thing.
I think adoption is probably a ways out, but if people wind up wanting more than Teams/Zoom/Discord/Facetime and so on it sets them up.
By the time any of that is ready, their purchase of Oculus will be more than a decade in the past. I think the acquisition was probably a mistake, but for Facebook blowing $2 billion isn't a very big mistake.
From my perspective as a consumer and somebody who was very interested in VR 6 years ago, I wish Oculus had either remained independent or had been purchased by somebody that was actually going to do something with the technology before a decade passes. I think Facebook's purchase of Oculus is one reason VR has lost so much energy and interest (Magic Leap's hilariously bad execution in AR hurts VR too).
If Relativity ends up with a competitive design, I agree that it's a risk. But I'd rather hear from Relativity's creators before assuming it could go the same way.
Give it a few months and Google/Microsoft/Amazon will probably buy it up.