Meta slashes metaverse budget, shifts focus to AI wearables
It has been revealed that Meta is planning to cut its 'Metaverse' budget, which it has been focusing on since 2021, by up to 30% and shift its focus to AI wearable devices. It has also been suggested that there may be staff cuts.
Meta's Zuckerberg Plans Deep Cuts for Metaverse Efforts - Bloomberg
Meta Plans to Shift Spending Away From the Metaverse - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-plans-to-shift-spending-away-from-the-metaverse-d0ac3b7f
In 2021, Meta began focusing on the 'metaverse' from its days as Facebook, its previous name.
Facebook announces it will invest approximately 5.5 billion yen in the development of the virtual space 'Metaverse' - GIGAZINE
The company name change from Facebook to Meta was also to signal its transition from a social media company to a metaverse company.
Over the next four years, Meta's Reality Lab division, which runs the metaverse business, recorded losses of more than $77 billion (approximately 12 trillion yen).
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been advising management to cut the company's overall budget by 10% in recent years, and it appears that immersive technologies, particularly the Metaverse, have become the target of this drastic cut, as they have not been as popular as expected.
Zuckerberg has already begun to invest heavily in AI, and in June 2025 he gave the go-ahead for the creation of an AI lab specializing in the pursuit of 'superintelligence.'
Meta's AI glasses, developed in partnership with sunglasses brand Ray-Ban, are already showing good results, and Meta's hardware partner, EssilorLuxottica, plans to produce 2 million units per year in 2025 and expand production capacity to 10 million units per year by the end of 2026.
The Metaverse project's budget is expected to be cut by up to 30%, and staff reductions may be implemented starting in January 2026.
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