An avatar of Mark Zuckerberg, leader government officer of Meta Platforms Inc., speaks all the way through the digital Meta Attach tournament in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg assists in keeping racking up losses from his metaverse investments whilst downsizing his social media corporate via charge cuts.
In its first-quarter income file on Wednesday, Meta stated its Truth Labs unit, which is tasked with development the digital truth and augmented truth applied sciences for the futuristic metaverse, recorded a $3.99 billion running loss.
The unit generated $339 million in income all the way through the quarter, a miniscule sum for a corporation that brings in tens of billions of greenbacks 1 / 4 in promoting gross sales.
The numbers display a slowdown from final quarter, when Truth Labs misplaced $4.28 billion on $727 million of income.
For all of final 12 months, Truth Labs recorded an running lack of $13.72 billion on $2.16 billion in gross sales, underscoring how VR and AR applied sciences haven’t begun to succeed in the mainstream.
Zuckerberg has touted 2023 as the corporate’s “12 months of potency” and has applied main cost-cutting projects that come with layoffs concentrated on an anticipated 21,000 workers.
However whilst the corporate slims down, it is nonetheless pumping billions of greenbacks into the metaverse after converting its identify from Fb to Meta in overdue 2021.
Knowledge supplied to CNBC via analysis company NPD Team confirmed that gross sales of VR headsets within the U.S. declined 2% year-over-year in 2022 as of December, as the vacation season didn’t spark a hurry of recent purchases.
In March, Meta reduce the cost of its Quest 2 VR headset in addition to the high-end Quest Professional. The Quest 2 now prices $70 not up to sooner than, promoting for $430, whilst the cost of the Quest Professional was once decreased via $500 from its unique worth to $1,000.
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