Remember Zuckerberg's Cherished Metaverse? Now He's Firing the People He Hired to Build It

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's dream of creating virtual worlds in which we can hang out with our friends, attend work meetings, and play games has been a disaster for a while now.

The company has lost billions of dollars on its Reality Labs division, which was tasked with building out the billionaire's vision for the "metaverse" — a concept that had such a hold on Zuckerberg a few years ago that he renamed the entire company Meta back in 2021.

Now, The Verge reports, Meta is laying off even more employees in the division — this time pummeling the folks working on its lineup of Quest VR headsets and apps.

"Some teams within Oculus Studios are undergoing shifts in structure and roles that have impacted team size," Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton told The Verge. "These changes are meant to help Studios work more efficiently on future mixed reality experiences for our growing audience, while still delivering great content for people today."

According to Bloomberg, more than 100 people across its Reality Labs division are being laid off, representing only the latest round of job cuts.

For years, Zuckerberg was hellbent on turning the concept into a reality. But despite having spent tens of billions of dollars on the tech, reality remains woefully behind his ambitions.

While the company's Ray-Ban smart glasses have sold better than Zuckerberg expected, Meta's lineup of VR headsets has seen sales slump over the years, indicating waning interest in the tech.

As of February, the company had lost nearly $70 billion over the last few years, with extremely little to show for it. A 44-second ad for the company's Horizon Worlds VR app earlier this year was so terrible that the company deleted it following widespread mockery.

The company's virtual worlds, once pitched as a place for work meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, have been overrun by underage children or turned into lifeless ghost towns.

In early 2023, Zuckerberg seemingly bowed to the pressure, announcing that Meta would be pivoting to AI, a change that in many ways marked the first nail in the coffin for the company's VR efforts. At the time, the CEO made noticeably few mentions of his metaverse, suggesting he had cut his losses and moved on, investing billions in AI instead.

Which leaves the question: could Zuckerberg's latest obsession suffer the same fate as his last passion project? Tech investors and executives alike have remained highly wary of an impending AI bubble, with astronomical spending far outstripping demand.

Is AI the future, the same way Zuckerberg's metaverse was once seen as the future as well?

During an investor call in January, Zuckerberg promised a "pivotal year for the metaverse." But whether that's a positive pivot toward bleeding less money, or a restructuring pivot as he spins the concept down, remains to be seen.

More on the metaverse: Zuckerberg's New Metaverse Ad Is So Bad That the People Who Created It Must Be Secretly Trying to Humiliate Him

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