Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse Department Has Lost $21.3 Billion Since January 2022

Are Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse dreams down the drain? it appears that Meta's metaverse department has lost $21.3 billion since the beginning of last year.

Reality Labs, the business and research unit that is behind virtual reality software and more has lost around $21.3 billion since January 2022. Essentially, Reality Labs isn't showing the kind of success that was anticipated by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In Q2 2023 sales, the department recorded $276 million, marking a drop from the $339 million at the beginning of this year.

Reuters

Metaverse hype over?

The worst isn't over yet, at least according to Meta CFO Susan Li. "For Reality Labs, we expect operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and investments to further scale our ecosystem," Li said in the report.

She noted how Reality Labs lost an additional $3.1 billion in the past quarter. Last year, Reality Labs lost about $13.7 billion while adding $2.16 billion in revenue. Most revenue was made through Meta's VR headsets sales.

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"We anticipate our full-year 2023 total expenses will be in the range of $88-91 billion, increased from our prior range of $86-90 billion due to legal-related expenses recorded in the second quarter of 2023," Li noted in the report.

Just yesterday, Meta-owned Facebook surpassed 3 billion monthly active users. Even though the platform has declined in terms of popularity, it is not the ghost town everyone thinks it is.

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Meta's entire family of apps that includes Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads has 3.88 billion monthly active users - almost half of the world's population.

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