Reality Labs, the division of Facebook known as Metaverse, which develops augmented reality technologies for the metaverse, has reported losses of over $3.7 billion in the second quarter, bringing the total losses to over $21 billion.
Despite Reality Labs’ ambitious vision, it has nothing but financial challenges.
The unit’s second-quarter sales stood at $276 million, which marks a decline from the first quarter’s revenue of $339 million.
As Breitbart reported:
Despite the metaverse losses, Facebook’s overall financial health appears to be on the mend. The company’s shares saw an uptick of around five percent following an 11 percent surge in revenue, primarily driven by a resurgence in advertising and an optimistic sales forecast for the upcoming third quarter.
Despite the losses incurred by Reality Labs, Facebook remains a dominant player in the advertising industry.
In its earnings report, Facebook indicated that it expects the operating losses in its Reality Labs unit to continue to rise.
This projection is attributed to “ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and investments to further scale our ecosystem.”
Reality Labs won’t be going anywhere due to Mark Zuckerberg’s well-documented metaverse obsession, which has been driving Facebook employees crazy. As Breitbart News previously reported:
One former employee said of the company’s failure to drive adoption of its VR hardware devices, “It was built like a software company that was trying to experiment instead of a mature hardware company that was trying to build hardware.”
Widely perceived as having failed in its pivot to VR, Zuckerberg is now trumpeting Facebook’s renewed focus on AI, which has led to a rebound in the company’s stock. But the company is not seen as the market leader in this arena, a position still occupied by Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its ChatGPT product.
Earlier this year, Meta announced it would fire 10,000 of the company’s employees, equating to 13 percent of its workforce, in a cost-cutting effort in the wake of a total economic meltdown in the tech sector.
In a memo announcing the move, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote:
“Meta is building the future of human connection, and today I want to share some updates on our Year of Efficiency that will help us do that.”
“The goals of this work are: (1) to make us a better technology company and (2) to improve our financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long-term vision,” he said.
Staff affected by the cull will be the company’s tech and business employees and recruiting teams.
Zuckerberg also announced he would be closing 5,000 open job listings.
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