As Mark Zuckerberg is quickly finding out, building a metaverse is no cheap task.
The company formerly known as Facebook, now Meta, has promised to lead the next evolution of the internet, by building and developing the physical hardware and software to support Web3.
They have gone all in on their metaverse, and in 2021, that decision cost them big.
On Wednesday, Meta released its Q4 and full year 2021 results, and its Reality Labs division was the biggest loser. This is the division that deals with everything Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Metaverse and their Oculus headsets.
Reality Labs brought in revenues of $2.2 billion, but ended the year with a net loss of $10 billion. This played a major role in dragging down Meta’s total net income to $29 billion, less than analysts predicted.
Coupled with news that Facebook had for the first time in its history seen a drop in daily active users, the results led to a dramatic implosion of Facebook stock price. Shares went down close to 25%, wiping out over $200 billion in its market value.
Despite the disappointing results from its metaverse division, Mark Zuckerberg intends to push forward, and sees these losses as merely investments that must be made for a prosperous future for the company.
“I’m encouraged by the progress we made this past year in a number of important growth areas like Reels, commerce, and virtual reality, and we’ll continue investing in these and other key priorities in 2022 as we work towards building the metaverse,” he said.
