Mark Zuckerberg spent «$45 billion on the metaverse in 4 years — the same amount Musk paid for Twitter

It’s been more than 4 years since Mark Zuckerberg changed the Facebook brand to Meta and invested tens of billions in his vision of the meta-universe — but the company has shown little in action to match this amount, raising doubts about the viability of the strategy.

In fact, Zuckerberg’s dream of a meta-universe has turned into a financial vortex that has swallowed up a whopping $45 billion over the years — an amount almost equal to the combined market capitalization of Snap and Pinterest or the amount of Elon Musk paid for Twitter.

More than a dozen former high-ranking Reality Labs employeesReality Labs, formerly Oculus VR, is the business research division of Meta Platforms, which produces virtual reality and augmented reality hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as Quest and online platforms such as Horizon Worlds. described (via TechSpot) their department as «dysfunctional and disorganized» — frequent management changes and constant staffing changes allegedly caused chaos, as many managers came from other Meta departments despite having no experience in AR and VR.

If we look at the exact financial indicators, Reality Labs’ losses grew year after year: more than $6 billion in 2020, $10 billion in 2021, $13 billion in 2022, and finally $16 billion in 2023. The first quarter of 2024 showed a loss of another $3.6 billion, in fact wiping out the division’s total revenue for 2022 and 2023 combined.

At the time of launch, Meta’s idea of a metaverse was generally well-received, and some media industry giants, including Disney, followed suit — with the only exception being that «mouse» company liquidated the unit completely two years ago during the restructuring, while Zuckerberg stubbornly continues to hold on to the idea. During last year’s earnings report, he warned that losses from the metaverse would continue to «significantly increase» whatever that means.