Bloomberg reported on the 12th that Meta, Facebook's parent company, will lay off about 10% of staff in its Reality Labs unit, which manufactures Virtual Reality (VR) devices and other hardware. The move is seen as part of a strategy to reallocate budgets to the newly prioritized artificial intelligence (AI) devices business.
Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg said Meta will lay off more than 1,500 employees this week, about 10% of Reality Labs' workforce. Reality Labs is responsible for developing VR headsets, AI glasses, and Metaverse products, and has about 15,000 employees.
In 2021, Meta even changed its name from "Facebook" to Meta to expand its Metaverse business, but Reality Labs has posted operating losses every year since its founding, recording more than $70 billion (about 103 trillion won) in cumulative losses to date, becoming Meta's "sore finger."
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also recently refrained from mentioning the Metaverse in public and is pouring internal capabilities and resources into developing "superintelligence" that surpasses human intelligence. In wearable devices, the company is focusing on products with stronger demand, such as AI-powered smart glasses, rather than VR.