Mark Zuckerberg says there's an finish in sight to Actuality Labs' years of multibillion-dollar losses following the corporate's layoffs to the metaverse division earlier this yr. The CEO stated he expects to "regularly cut back" how a lot cash the corporate is shedding because it doubles down on AI glasses and shifts away from digital actuality.
Talking throughout Meta's fourth-quarter earnings name, Zuckerberg was clear that the modifications gained't occur quickly, however sounded optimistic concerning the division that misplaced greater than $19 billion in 2025 alone. "For Actuality Labs, we’re directing most of our funding in the direction of glasses and wearables going ahead, whereas specializing in making Horizon an enormous success on cellular and making VR a worthwhile ecosystem over the approaching years," he stated. "I count on Actuality Labs losses this yr to be just like final yr, and this may probably be the height, as we begin to regularly cut back our losses going ahead."
The corporate reduce greater than 1,000 staff from Actuality Labs earlier this month, shut down three VR studios and introduced plans to retire its app for VR conferences. Meta has additionally paused plans for third-party Horizon OS headsets. As an alternative, Meta is doubling down on its sensible glasses and and wearables enterprise, which tie in additional neatly to Zuckerberg's imaginative and prescient for creating AI "superintelligence."
Through the name, Zuckerberg famous that gross sales of Meta's sensible glasses "greater than tripled" in 2025, and hinted at larger plans for AR glasses. "They [AI glasses] are going to have the ability to see what you see, hear what you hear, discuss to you and enable you to as you go about your day and even present you data or generate customized UI proper there in your imaginative and prescient," he stated.
Zuckerberg has spent the previous few years laying the groundwork for pivoting Meta's metaverse work into AI. He provided one instance if what the means for Meta’s Horizon app.
"You’ll be able to think about … folks having the ability to simply, by means of a immediate, create a world or create a recreation, and be capable of share that with individuals who they care about. And also you see it in your feed, and you’ll soar proper into it, and you’ll interact in it. And there are 3D variations of that, and there are 2D variations of that. And Horizon, I believe matches very effectively with the type of immersive 3D model of that.
“However there's undoubtedly a model of the long run the place, , any video that you just see, you may, like, faucet on and soar into it and, like, interact and type of like, expertise it in a extra significant means. And I believe that the investments that we've completed in each a variety of the digital actuality software program and Horizon … are literally going to pair effectively with these AI advances to have the ability to carry a few of these experiences to a whole bunch of thousands and thousands and billions of individuals by means of cellular."
One factor Zuckerberg didn’t point out, although: the phrase “metaverse.”
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/mark-zuckerberg-says-reality-labs-will-eventually-stop-losing-so-much-money-222900157.html?src=rss