The funeral of the metaverse – mocked, ridiculed, given up dead as soon as he was born – could transform, in a not too distant time horizon, into a very profitable baptism. The recent announcement of the closure of Horizon Worlds for Quest devices (the famous headsets) marks a turning point in the financial priorities of Meta Platforms (the Facebook and Instagram company). The Reality Labs division, responsible for developing the Metaverse, has recorded cumulative operating losses exceeding $90 billion from 2020 to date. This data, combined with the recent layoffs involving approximately 1,500 employees in the VR (virtual reality) sector, indicates a structural downsizing of projects related to immersive virtual reality in favor of technologies with shorter adoption cycles.
Spending forecasts of up to 135 billion (since bankruptcy)
However, cash flow analysis reveals that number 1 Mark Zuckerberg has not reduced risk exposure, but has reallocated it. Zuckerberg believed in the metaverse, so much so that he changed the name of his company. Things didn’t go exactly as expected. Reality Labs’ failure reflects a misjudgment on technological maturity and market demand. High headset costs and ergonomic limitations have hindered mass adoption. The Horizon Worlds ecosystem has not retained users, forcing the group to “pivot” towards AI. The fragmentation of technical standards and the lack of interoperability between platforms have isolated consumers in closed ecosystems. High latency and poor battery life have limited professional use. Finally, the lack of monetization of the software made the “burn rate” unsustainable. End of games.
Zuckerberg understood this and shifted the balance. Capex (capital spending) guidance for fiscal 2026 has been revised upward, with spending forecast between $115 billion and $135 billion. This increase is almost entirely devoted to the acquisition of computing power and the development of data centers necessary for training the next generation language models, including the successor to Llama 3 and the new personal assistance systems.
The Ai moves towards the Rayban Meta
Financial markets are carefully watching this shift in capital. Despite the hardware division burning cash rapidly, Meta stock has shown significant resistance, supported by growth in advertising revenues optimized through artificial intelligence algorithms. The strategy now seems focused on the integration of AI into wearable devices, such as the glasses – Rayban Meta – produced in partnership with Luxottica, abandoning the isolationist approach of the Quest viewers in favor of a more natural and daily interaction.
The sustainability of this model depends on Meta’s ability to generate certain returns from technological investments that exceed, for a single company, the GDP of many nations. The transition from the Metaverse to “Personal Superintelligence” therefore does not represent a retreat, but a bet on the operational centrality of artificial intelligence in the next computational decade.
9 trillion goal
Meta’s Board of Directors, among other things, approved a stock option plan structured around long-term market capitalization objectives. The program provides for the provision of billions in bonuses to top managers provided that the company valuation reaches $9 trillion within the next five years. Zuckerberg is excluded from this specific stock award. And the strategy aims precisely to link the permanence of key executives to the results of the integration between hardware and artificial intelligence. Achieving the target requires an increase in the share value of 500% compared to current levels. An extremely ambitious goal.