In its second quarter report, Meta Corporation reported a significant loss of $4.48 billion for its meta universe development division Reality Labs. Since the division's inception at the end of 2020, cumulative losses have reached more than $50 billion. By year, the losses are as follows: more than $6 billion in 2020, $10 billion in 2021, $13 billion in 2022, and $16 billion in 2023.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, noted during the financial results conference call that a few years ago he expected holographic augmented reality (AR) to emerge before smart artificial intelligence (AI). However, he now believes that these technologies may be ready in reverse order. He also emphasized that the company is well prepared for the changes thanks to its investment in Reality Labs.
In June, Reality Labs laid off about 100 employees, including vice presidents and developers, and work on a number of major projects was put on hold, according to Yahoo Finance sources. Meanwhile, Reality Labs' revenue totaled $353 million, up 28% from last year's $276 million. The company's main revenue comes from sales of Quest VR headsets and Ray-Ban smartglasses.
In July, Zuckerberg noted the growing popularity of smart glasses and expressed confidence that tens or even hundreds of millions of people would start using them in the future. At the same time, Meta's overall financial results for the second quarter exceeded forecasts: revenue amounted to $39.07 billion, and net profit reached $13.47 billion.
Recall that in the first quarter Reality Labs incurred losses of about $3.8 billion on revenues of $440 million. It was also reported that Zuckerberg plans to cut the budget of the meta-universe division by 20%.
In October 2021, Facebook made a major rebranding, renaming itself Meta and announcing a shift in focus from social media to developing a meta-universe using VR and AR technologies .
