In November, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that despite the $3.6 billion loss, and subsequent layoff of 11,000 employees, he still has a long-term vision for the metaverse
While 2022 has been a tough year for the tech industry, Meta has had an especially rough run. Its stock has dropped 60% since the company changed its name in October 2021, when its stock traded at $323.57 per share. Currently, Meta is trading at $114.74, according to MarketWatch.
Meta began 2022 with a new name and a new vision for the future, and at Reality Labs it’s our job to bring that vision to life, wrote Reality Labs CTO Andrew Bosworth in a company post. We never thought it would be easy or straightforward, but this year was even harder than we expected.
Economic challenges across the world, combined with pressures on Meta’s core business, created a perfect storm of scepticism about the investments we’re making, Bosworth explained.
Meta, then Facebook, launched Facebook Reality Labs in September 2020. Reality Labs, which created the Oculus Rift VR headset in 2016, was tasked to develop Meta’s metaverse project, which the company announced when it changed its name last year.
The long-term value of these technologies will come from how they’re adopted by the ecosystem of developers, creators, and builders that have formed around these devices, Bosworth wrote.
In October, Meta revealed that its Reality Labs metaverse division lost over $3.6 billion in the third quarter of 2022, compared to $2.63 billion at the same time the year before. According to Bosworth, 20% of Meta’s overall investments went to Reality Labs, with the other 80% going to Meta’s core business, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
It’s a level of investment we believe makes sense for a company committed to staying at the leading edge of one of the most competitive and innovative industries on earth, Bosworth wrote.
In November, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that despite the $3.6 billion loss, and subsequent layoff of 11,000 employees, he still has a long-term vision for the metaverse.
Reality Labs was tasked with developing the company’s metaverse project, Horizon Worlds.
The project has struggled to gain traction. In October, it was placed on ‘quality lockdown,’ as internal communications revealed that even Meta employees were not logging in. The company’s much-touted demo of its latest human avatar enhancements included fake legs.
