Zuckerberg acknowledges investor "discomfort" as Meta loses another $3.7B on Reality Labs
Meta's struggling Reality Labs segment, the mixed reality division that houses the company formerly known as Oculus and is crucial to the company's metaverse ambitions, is still losing billions of dollars each quarter.
According to Meta's fiscal report for the second quarter ended June 30, 2023, Reality Labs reported an operating loss of $3.7 billion. That's substantially more than the $2.8 billion loss Meta reported during the same quarter last year.
Revenue was also down at Reality Labs during the second quarter, falling by 39 percent year-on-year to $276 million due to "lower Quest 2 sales." Expenses, meanwhile, increased by 23 percent to $4 billion due to "a reduction in Reality Labs loss reserves in Q2 of last year as well as growth in employee-related costs."
Reality Labs has now lost over $7.7 billion over the past six months, and Meta has suggested that's going to be the norm for the foreseeable future.
"We expect operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in AR/VR and our investments to further scale our ecosystem," said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on an earrings call.
Elaborating on how the Meta actually intends to recoup its investment in Reality Labs, Meta CFO Susan Li said the company is implementing an "ambitious long-term horizon multifaceted roadmap" that spans VR, AR, metaverse social platforms, and neural interfaces.
"In the near term, we're focused on growing adoption of the existing products, and we're constantly learning more about demand and use cases that inform our future plans. But a lot of the investment that's driving the growth here is around conducting the fundamental R&D to solve hard technology problems that are going to enable our
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