Mark Zuckerberg is going to run Meta into the ground if he has to in order to make the metaverse a reality.
As reported by Engadget, Meta held its latest earnings call today and revealed that Reality Labs, the arm of the company responsible for the Meta Quest and the company’s ambitions in virtual and augmented reality, lost $3.7 billion in the third quarter of 2022. While that part of the company lost $10 billion in 2021, it appears it is on track to lose more than that this year as its losses have already crossed $9 billion so far. CFO Dave Whener even admitted that “We do anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year.”
All of those billions lost don’t seem to have any effect on Mark Zuckerberg. The CEO of Meta believes that all of that investment will pay off…in a few generations.
“This is a massive undertaking and it’s often going to take a few versions of each product before they become mainstream. But I think that our work here is going to be of historic importance and create the foundation for an entirely new way that we will interact with each other and blend technology into our lives.”
Zuckerberg says to forget the haters
On the call, the executives admitted that the company is experiencing challenges and could be staff staying at the same size or even shrinking. Zuckerberg specifically said that “some teams will grow meaningfully but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year.”
Zuckerberg continues to be bullish, however, about the metaverse. In response to investors who have started to lose faith in the Meta CEO over his vision of the digital future, Zuckerberg said that he has no plans to stop investment in the area.
“There’s a difference between something being experimental and not knowing how good it’s going to end up being. The metaverse work is a longer term set of efforts that we’re working on. But, I don’t know, I think that is going to end up working too.”
On the call, the company also said that the “next generation of our consumer Quest headset” is expected to launch late next year, confirming that a Meta Quest 3 is in the works to release in 2023. Meta did not say what upgrades we could expect from the next generation of the augmented reality headset.
The company just recently released the Meta Quest Pro, the first generation of its “pro” lineup.
