{"id":14742,"date":"2026-01-29T12:05:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T12:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/meta-burned-19-billion-on-vr-last-year-and-2026-wont-be-any-better\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T12:05:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T12:05:47","slug":"meta-burned-19-billion-on-vr-last-year-and-2026-wont-be-any-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/meta-burned-19-billion-on-vr-last-year-and-2026-wont-be-any-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta burned $19 billion on VR last year, and 2026 won\u2019t be any better"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Earlier this month, Meta laid off 10% of the staff for Reality Labs, its virtual reality unit, reportedly cutting 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<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Wednesday, Meta&rsquo;s earnings report 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<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those losses stood against what the unit generated in sales: $955 million in Q4 and some $2.2 billion throughout 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During the company&rsquo;s earnings call on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg struck a tone of optimism for his company&rsquo;s VR team while noting that losses in 2026 are expected to be very much the same.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&ldquo;For 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,&rdquo; Zuckerberg said, during the call. However, the CEO noted that losses were expected to continue. &ldquo;I expect Reality Labs losses this year to be similar to last year,&rdquo; Zuckerberg said, while noting that this year would &ldquo;likely be the peak, as we start to gradually reduce our losses going forward.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Meta announced a pivot toward the &ldquo;metaverse&rdquo; 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 &mdash; even being referred to as an &ldquo;international laughingstock.&rdquo; Nearly half a decade later, that skepticism hasn&rsquo;t exactly subsided. As the VR business continues to lose money and Meta continues an aggressive pivot away from VR and toward AI, it&rsquo;s unclear what exactly will turn the ailing business around.<\/p>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/12-weeks-jail-for-school-it-support-technician-who-took-upskirt-videos-of-teachers\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">&lt;div&gt;12 weeks' jail for school IT support technician who took upskirt videos of teachers&lt;\/div&gt;<\/span><\/a><\/div><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last week, CNBC reported that, in addition to the layoffs, Meta had plans to shutter a number of its VR studios &mdash; another sign that the company&rsquo;s interest in virtual reality is waning. The company also recently announced that it would be retiring its standalone Workrooms app &mdash; which the company had pitched to office workers as a VR space that could be used to hold meetings.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-techcrunch-inline-cta\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__wrapper\" readability=\"5.5\">\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__content\" readability=\"23.538461538462\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__location\">Boston, MA<\/span><br>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__separator\">|<\/span><br>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__date\">June 23, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><sub>Meta burned $19 billion on VR last year, and 2026 won&rsquo;t be any better<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this month, Meta laid off 10% of the staff for Reality Labs, its virtual reality unit, reportedly cutting 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. On Wednesday, Meta&rsquo;s earnings report showed that its embattled&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/meta-burned-19-billion-on-vr-last-year-and-2026-wont-be-any-better\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Meta burned $19 billion on VR last year, and 2026 won\u2019t be any better&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}