Virtual reality and the metaverse continue to be a financial sinkhole for Meta.
In the social media company’s second-quarter earnings, it reported its Reality Labs unit, which oversees the VR and AR (augmented reality) technologies that go hand in hand with the metaverse, lost $3.7 billion.
That brings its losses since the beginning of 2022 to $21.5 billion—and its overall losses (since the fourth quarter of 2020) to just shy of $34 billion.
Despite the losses, CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains “fully committed” to the metaverse and A.I., calling them both “major priorities” that overlap and are complementary. And he indicated he’s not worried about the low engagement numbers for Horizon Worlds, the metaverse manifestation that has, so far, fallen flat.
“For Horizon, the team is focused on retention right now, and we’re making good progress on that,” he said on an earnings call Wednesday. “We made big improvements on avatars as well, and that’s going to be a bridge between our mobile apps and our VR and mixed reality experiences.”
fortune.com
In the social media company’s second-quarter earnings, it reported its Reality Labs unit, which oversees the VR and AR (augmented reality) technologies that go hand in hand with the metaverse, lost $3.7 billion.
That brings its losses since the beginning of 2022 to $21.5 billion—and its overall losses (since the fourth quarter of 2020) to just shy of $34 billion.
Despite the losses, CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains “fully committed” to the metaverse and A.I., calling them both “major priorities” that overlap and are complementary. And he indicated he’s not worried about the low engagement numbers for Horizon Worlds, the metaverse manifestation that has, so far, fallen flat.
“For Horizon, the team is focused on retention right now, and we’re making good progress on that,” he said on an earnings call Wednesday. “We made big improvements on avatars as well, and that’s going to be a bridge between our mobile apps and our VR and mixed reality experiences.”
Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse meltdown: Meta’s Reality Labs has lost $21 billion in roughly 18 months
But Zuckerberg says he’s still fully committed.
