In 2021, Zuckerberg was very clear that Facebook’s future was tied to the metaverseso much so that He even changed the name of his company.. However, the market did not respond as expected and, after accumulate million-dollar lossesrecently Meta surrendered to the evidence and put a 30% blow to the budget of the Reality Labs division. It was just the beginning.
Layoffs. They overtook him in the New York Times and just confirmed: Meta is going to lay off 10% of the Reality Labs workforce, about 1,500 employees in total. Andrew Bosworth, CTO of the company and head of the division, had summoned employees to the “most important” meeting of the year. So important that for many it has been the last.
Cuts. As we said, several weeks ago it was made public that Meta was cutting Reality Labs by 30%. It was an expected decision if we take into account that the division dedicated to the metaverse has accumulated 70 billion dollars in losseswhich is said soon. In this context, the layoffs were the next step and also the confirmation that Meta abandons the dream of the metaverse, at least as they proposed it years ago.
New priorities. The objective behind the cuts is to be able to move investment to Zuckerberg’s new “pretty girl”, which is none other than AI. Since the beginning of last summer, Meta has signed big names and AI researchers for real millionaires to create your TBD laboratorywho is engrossed in creation of a superintelligence. In parallel, they are dedicating billions to the construction of data centers, one of them as big as Manhattan Island. They also plan to move resources from the metaverse to the AI glasses, your new reference hardware.
Investors have spoken. When Meta announced that it was going to spend even more than planned on AI infrastructure, stocks plummeted even though they had achieved very good results. They were investors sending a clear message: we do not see this unbridled spending at all clearly. However, when the metaverse cuts were announced just the opposite happened and the shares rose.
script twist. Meta has not explicitly admitted that it is leaving the metaverse, in fact in October of last year they were still defending it. What they have done is talk about a change in strategy and where before there were VR helmets, now there are AI glasses. It is no longer a virtual world completely separated from the real one, but rather an augmented reality powered by AI. The Ray-Ban Meta they have been a success for the company and recently announced the Ray-Ban Displayalthough We will have to wait to try them.
Image | Photo of Azwedo L.LC in Unsplash
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