Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, demonstrates the Meta Quest Professional in the course of the digital Meta Join occasion in New York on Oct. 11, 2022.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs
Meta continues to lose billions of {dollars} creating the digital actuality and augmented actuality applied sciences wanted to underpin the nascent metaverse.
The social media big reported fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday and stated its Actuality Labs unit recorded an working lack of $4.97 billion whereas producing $1.1 billion in gross sales. Analysts have been projecting that unit to log a fourth-quarter working lack of $5.4 billion on $1.1 billion in gross sales.
Actuality Labs is Meta’s unit that makes the Quest household of virtual-reality headsets and Ray-Ban Meta Good Glasses.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg kick-started his firm’s VR endeavors in 2014 when it acquired the startup Oculus for $2 billion. Since then, Zuckerberg has characterised VR and AR as central to his plans to develop the futuristic digital world generally known as the metaverse, which he has stated symbolize the following main computing platform.
Wall Road has questioned Zuckerberg’s metaverse funding. Actuality Labs has tallied an working lack of greater than $60 billion since 2020, as of Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings report.
Meta final week stated it might make investments between $60 billion and $65 billion in 2025 capital expenditures to broaden its computing infrastructure associated to synthetic intelligence. Zuckerberg has beforehand stated AI is core to the corporate’s metaverse efforts, together with its Ray-Ban Meta good glasses. Meta develops that system with France-based EssilorLuxottica.
The social media firm final 12 months additionally unveiled its Orion prototype AR headset that’s able to overlaying digital objects on high of an individual’s actual area of view.
Meta launched its newest VR headset, the $299 Quest 3S, throughout its September Join occasion and pitched the system as a manner for folks to observe films, play video games and exercise in VR.
Different tech corporations are additionally investing in VR and AR.
Apple’s Imaginative and prescient Professional headset went on sale within the U.S. in February 2024 with a beginning worth of $3,499, and in December, Google and Samsung stated they have been engaged on a VR and AR system dubbed Venture Moohan that might be in the stores in 2025 for an undisclosed worth.
