Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, indicated that the prolonged period of massive financial deficits in Reality Labs is approaching a turning point, especially after the recent staff reductions in the metaverse unit. He expressed confidence in steadily decreasing the division's expenditures by emphasizing AI-powered eyewear and moving resources from virtual reality pursuits.
In Meta's latest quarterly financial discussion, Zuckerberg emphasized that improvements would not occur immediately but expressed positivity regarding the unit, which recorded over $19 billion in losses for 2025. He stated, 'For Reality Labs, we are directing most of our investment towards glasses and wearables going forward, while focusing on making Horizon a massive success on mobile and making VR a profitable ecosystem over the coming years.' He added, 'I expect Reality Labs losses this year to be similar to last year, and this will likely be the peak, as we start to gradually reduce our losses going forward.'
This month, Meta eliminated over 1,000 positions within Reality Labs, closed three virtual reality development teams, and revealed intentions to discontinue its virtual reality conferencing software. The firm has halted development of headsets using Horizon OS from external partners. The company is now intensifying efforts on intelligent eyewear and portable devices, aligning closely with Zuckerberg's goals for advancing artificial intelligence toward superior capabilities.
Zuckerberg highlighted during the discussion that shipments of Meta's intelligent eyewear surged by over three times in 2025 and suggested ambitious developments for augmented reality devices. He described, 'They [AI glasses] are going to be able to see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you and help you as you go about your day and even show you information or generate custom UI right there in your vision.'
Over recent years, Zuckerberg has been preparing to redirect Meta's metaverse initiatives toward artificial intelligence integration. He provided an illustration of how this shift impacts the Horizon platform.
"You can imagine … people being able to easily, through a prompt, create a world or create a game, and be able to share that with people who they care about. And you see it in your feed, and you can jump right into it, and you can engage in it. And there are 3D versions of that, and there are 2D versions of that. And Horizon, I think fits very well with the kind of immersive 3D version of that. “But there's definitely a version of the future where, you know, any video that you see, you can, like, tap on and jump into it and, like, engage and kind of like, experience it in a more meaningful way. And I think that the investments that we've done in both a lot of the virtual reality software and Horizon … are actually going to pair well with these AI advances to be able to bring some of those experiences to hundreds of millions and billions of people through mobile."
Notably absent from Zuckerberg's remarks was any reference to the term 'metaverse.'