{"id":444235,"date":"2026-01-29T02:51:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T02:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/444235\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T02:51:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T02:51:06","slug":"meta-burned-19-billion-on-vr-last-year-and-2026-wont-be-any-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/444235\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta burned $19 billion on VR last year, and 2026 won\u2019t be any better"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, Meta laid off 10% of the staff for Reality Labs, its virtual reality unit, reportedly cutting<\/a> as many as 1,000 employees. Now, in a development that seems directly related, the company has revealed that the unit lost many billions of dollars last year.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Meta\u2019s earnings report<\/a> showed that its embattled virtual reality business had lost some $19.1 billion in 2025, which is slightly more than it lost in 2024 (that year, the losses hovered around $17.7 billion). In its fourth quarter, the unit posted a loss of $6.2 billion, the report shows.<\/p>\n

Those losses stood against what the unit generated in sales: $955 million in Q4 and some $2.2 billion throughout 2025.<\/p>\n

During the company\u2019s earnings call on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg struck a tone of optimism for his company\u2019s VR team while noting that losses in 2026 are expected to be very much the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Reality Labs, we are directing most of our investment towards glasses and wearables going forward, while focusing on making Horizon a massive success on Mobile and making VR a profitable ecosystem over the coming years,\u201d Zuckerberg said, during the call. However, the CEO noted that losses were expected to continue. \u201cI expect Reality Labs losses this year to be similar to last year,\u201d Zuckerberg said, while noting that this year would \u201clikely be the peak, as we start to gradually reduce our losses going forward.\u201d <\/p>\n

When Meta announced a pivot toward the \u201cmetaverse\u201d in 2021, the move was regarded with a certain amount of skepticism and, during its first year of VR efforts, the company faced harsh criticism<\/a> \u2014 even being referred to as an \u201cinternational laughingstock<\/a>.\u201d Nearly half a decade later, that skepticism hasn\u2019t exactly subsided<\/a>. As the VR business continues to lose money and Meta continues an aggressive pivot away from VR and toward AI, it\u2019s unclear what exactly will turn the ailing business around.<\/p>\n

Last week, CNBC reported that<\/a>, in addition to the layoffs, Meta had plans to shutter a number of its VR studios \u2014 another sign that the company\u2019s interest in virtual reality is waning. The company also recently announced that it would be retiring its standalone Workrooms app<\/a> \u2014 which the company had pitched to office workers as a VR space that could be used to hold meetings.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this month, Meta laid off 10% of the staff for Reality Labs, its virtual reality unit, reportedly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[64,63,2455,1333,68960,51782,105,238,239,240],"class_list":{"0":"post-444235","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mark-zuckerberg","11":"tag-meta","12":"tag-metaverse","13":"tag-reality-labs","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-virtual-reality","16":"tag-virtualreality","17":"tag-vr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}