The metaverse could be a 'legendary misadventure,' Meta executive says, if Reality Labs doesn't turn things around in 2025
Meta chief technology officer Andrew «Boz» Bosworth said in an internal memo shared with Business Insider that the company's Reality Labs division needs to turn things around in a big way in 2025, or else its whole venture into mixed and virtual reality could go down as a «legendary misadventure.»
Reality Labs has sunk tens of billions of dollars into VR development, but the technology has never broken through to «next big thing» status as once predicted. As we said in August 2024, the losses for Meta «are spiralling out of control, with no end in sight.» The division suffered nearly $50 billion in losses over 2020-2024, and the news has not gotten any better since: In its fourth-quarter earnings report released last week, Meta said Reality Labs recorded yet another operating loss of $5 billion.
Meta has access to virtually unlimited resources, but even it can't keep taking those kinds of body shots forever, a point Bosworth made in his memo. «We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR [mixed reality],» he wrote. «And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance. If you don't feel the weight of history on you then you aren't paying attention.
»This year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure."
Nothing's out of the question—Bosworth said in a memo last week reported by Business Insider that Reality Labs sales had grown by 40% in 2024, which «positioned [it] for greatness in 2025.» In this more recent memo, he said the achievement marked Reality Labs' «most successful year to date,» but added that «it isn't enough,» and that «we haven't actually made a dent in the world yet.»
It's tough to nail down the real scale of the AR/VR marketplace. It seems tiny, but in April 2024 tech investor Jack Soslow said «the VR market is larger than perceived»—although as we noted at the time, Soslow was employed by a16z
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