The corporate is tightening its purse strings for Actuality Labs, its division for VR, AR, and the metaverse, The Info reported Thursday.
{Hardware} groups within the division have been requested to trim spending by almost 20% from this 12 months into 2026, in keeping with The Info, which cited a former Actuality Labs supervisor.
This follows layoffs over the previous 12 months within the division, largely focusing on center and senior managers, and which included greater than a dozen vice presidents and administrators final month, The Info reported.
Meta didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Meta has spent upwards of $40 billion on the metaverse, Zuckerberg’s pricey pet undertaking. Meta’s CFO informed the division earlier this 12 months that it ought to be focusing on a $1 trillion alternative in AR and VR, The Info reported. Meta at present sells its Quest line of headsets and its Meta RayBans AI glasses, although some fancy AR glasses are on the way in which.
On a name with analysts final 12 months, the Meta CEO mentioned the metaverse was a “very long-term wager.”
“I can not assure you that I am gonna be proper about this wager,” he mentioned. “I do suppose that that is the course that the world goes in.”
When Zuckerberg proclaimed 2023 Meta’s “12 months of effectivity,” nonetheless, he famous Actuality Labs could be topic to cost-cutting measures identical to every other division.
“We’re wanting on the indicators and studying what is smart to do going ahead,” he mentioned final 12 months. “We’re always shifting how we execute. Different issues like flattening the org construction, these are going to have an effect on the entire firm, each in Actuality Labs and Household of Apps. We wish the work to be extra environment friendly.”
Zuckerberg renamed Fb as Meta in 2021 and mentioned it will turn out to be a “metaverse firm.”
“To any extent further, we’ll be metaverse first, not Fb first,” he mentioned on the time.
