"Back in early December, the WSJ previously reported that Meta's Reality Labs had lost the company over $77 billion since its inception in 2020. The company's decision to finally pull the plug on the ailing metaverse - after rebranding as "Meta" from Facebook in 2021 - was seen by industry analysts as a "smart move, just late." (Even Zuckerberg himself began to shy away from the metaverse in earnings calls as early as 2023, as the whole project crumbled.)"
"Overall, the layoffs impact nearly 10 percent of the division's total staff, drastic cuts which come as part of the company's shift away from virtual reality toward AI devices, like its AI smart glasses. "We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward wearables," a spokesman for Meta told the WSJ. "This is part of that effort.""
Meta is significantly reducing its Reality Labs workforce, laying off about 1,500 employees and closing three VR game studios while keeping Horizon Worlds running in a reduced form. The cuts represent nearly ten percent of Reality Labs staff and accompany a strategic shift from virtual reality toward AI-enabled wearables, including smart glasses. Reality Labs has accumulated over $77 billion in losses since 2020. Meta rebranded to emphasize the metaverse in 2021, but leadership and analysts have come to view the pivot away from large-scale metaverse investment as necessary. International shipments of Meta's AI smart glasses were recently paused.
Read at Futurism
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