Meta’s Reality Labs lay off staff after years of financial losses

The layoffs are the result of virtual reality projects not doing well enough. But which products are Meta’s next priority?

Meta has announced plans to let go of 10% of employees who work in the company’s Reality Labs division. This week should be their last, claims Bloomberg’s source, who remains anonymous due to not being authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The company is now reprioritizing its investments, thus pushing virtual reality projects aside in favour of artificial intelligence-powered wearable technology.

Meta’s Reality Labs are responsible for developing the company’s virtual and augmented reality hardware, AI-powered smart glasses, and other metaverse-related products.

For example, Tom’s Guide describes Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses as “the current gold standard for smart glasses with display,” as they support features such as captions, translations, navigation, messaging, and AI interactions visible directly in the wearer’s field of view.

Ray-Ban Display glasses are among the company’s products showing robust demand – their release outside the US has even been delayed for the time being due to their high popularity.

However, not all of Reality Labs' high-tech investments are paying off.

Reality Labs has been reporting multi-billion-dollar losses each quarter for several years now.

As covered by PYMNTS, Meta’s Reality Labs division, which includes the metaverse group, has lost over $70 billion since the beginning of 2021. According to reports, Meta has faced criticism for making significant investments in infrastructure without a clear consensus on how success would be measured. This contributed to Reality Lab’s failure to generate significant revenue.

In December last year, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, asked senior leaders to identify areas where budgets could be reduced, including scaling back some virtual reality and metaverse initiatives.

At the time, it was reported that executives were considering reducing the Metaverse Group budget by up to 30%.

The division employs around 15,000 people.

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