Reality Labs’ metaverse-focused loss hits $4 billion

Operating loss of Meta’s metaverse-focused Reality Labs division for January–March 2023 amounted to $3.99 billion.

\n\n

\n\n

For the reporting period, the company reported a net income of $5.71 billion.

\n\n

Reality Labs’ total loss for 2022 amounted to $13.7 billion (in 2021 — $10.2 billion).

\n\n

During a conference with analysts, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned that he expected the unit to remain unprofitable throughout 2023.

\n\n

Profitability for the company was driven by its AI initiatives.

\n\n

\”Our work with AI is yielding good results. […] The metaverse technology will also help in creating AI-based products. For example, deploying AI agents will enable us to leverage the advantages of investments in avatars over the past few years,\”— Zuckerberg said.

\n\n

Earlier he said the firm is developing a set of creative and expressive tools that could help \”increase efficiency\” of some of its existing products.

\n\n

\”In the long term, we will focus on developing AI characters that will help people in various ways. We are exploring capabilities in text (for example, chat in WhatsApp and Messenger), in images (for example, creative filters on Instagram and advertising formats), as well as in video and multimodal capabilities\”, — he explained.

\n\n

In March 2023, Meta declined to pursue NFT-related projects.

\n\n

In the same month, WSJ reported planned additional employee layoffs at the company, including those connected with Reality Labs.

\n\n

In November 2022, the company announced cuts of 11,000 employees (13% of staff) as part of the restructuring of its organisation.