Reality Labs, Mark Zuckerberg’s invention, looks to be having major problems, with a $21 billion loss in 18 months. Investors are paying a high price for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s concept of the metaverse’s future. According to Fortune Magazine, Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which houses the company’s virtual reality technology and ambitions, recorded a $21 billion loss in just 18 months.
As reported by the news site, the social network company’s Reality Labs arm lost $3.7 billion in its second-quarter results report. This raises its losses since the beginning of 2022 to $21.5 billion, bringing its total losses (from the fourth quarter of 2020) to slightly under $34 billion.
Despite the failures, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is “fully committed” to AI and the metaverse, describing both as “major priorities” that complement and overlap. And he said he’s not concerned about Horizon Worlds’ poor engagement statistics, the metaverse embodiment that has so far failed. “For Horizon, the team is focused on retention right now, and we’re making good progress on that,” he said during a conference call with investors on Wednesday.
“We also made significant advancements in avatars, which will serve as a link between our mobile apps and our VR and mixed reality experiences.” Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune increased by $4.6 billion on Thursday as Meta Platforms Inc. posted good second-quarter profitability, allowing him to join his billionaire counterparts at Alphabet Inc. in profiting from a revival in advertising expenditure.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, located in Menlo Park, California, soared as high as 9% in New York before ending up at 4.4%, the most since April. Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has increased by $67.7 billion this year to $113.3 billion, ranking second only to Elon Musk in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The majority of Zuckerberg’s riches come from Meta stock, which has risen 159% this year and ranks 10th on the wealth index. The social networking company posted outstanding profits for the quarter ending June 30 and provided an upbeat forecast for the current term.
Zuckerberg was hardly the only US tech tycoon who had a good week. Alphabet co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin both increased their net worth by more than $5 billion on Wednesday, as the firm announced second-quarter earnings that were above analysts’ estimates, driven by advertising on its main Google search engine.
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