In 2021, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg bet heavily on virtual reality's promise, even rebranding his company from Facebook to Meta -- a signal of his confidence that the future belonged to the metaverse, an artificial world accessible through VR headsets.
Reality Labs, the division largely devoted to VR products, has since 2021 burned through $80.6 billion while generating just $9.7 billion in revenue.
According to Bloomberg, Meta plans to cut metaverse costs by 30 percent -- news that drove its share price up as much as 4 percent in Thursday trading on Wall Street.
The shift comes as Zuckerberg has dramatically increased resources allocated to AI and reorganized the dedicated teams internally.
The 41-year-old CEO has launched an aggressive recruitment campaign, attracting executives from OpenAI, Apple and Google with multibillion-dollar offers.
The latest hire, announced Wednesday, is Alan Dye, one of Apple's top design executives. Zuckerberg has tasked him with leading a new lab dedicated to integrating AI into products.
Meta is now focusing more on augmented reality through its connected glasses (Meta Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta) rather than virtual reality.
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