More than 50% of Reality Labs spending is on the research and development of AR glasses, a product line which Meta has yet to launch. The rest of the spending is on Quest headsets and the Horizon software platform, which are both still relatively early technologies far from maturity.
Reality Labs spending has been increasing every year, but according to The Information’s report Meta executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, now want to start to rein in spending and begin the long path to profitability as the XR sector matures. They reportedly told Reality Labs hardware teams to cut spending by 20% by 2026, with “much of those cuts happening this year”. […]
As The Information notes, this is far from a retreat from AR/VR for Meta, and can be seen more as a sign of a transition for Reality Labs from mainly being a research and development division to eventually one day becoming a profitable business.
I saw somewhere else that they lost 50 billion in five years.
So their new goal is an $8 Billion loss?
That’s not something you can tell from the numbers given, because it depends on their total spending, not their losses. Maybe they spent 50B/year and made 40B/year back, leaving them with 10B in losses. I that case reducing the spending by 20% to 40B would make them even
This is in the article as well:
Since breaking out Reality Labs’ finances in public filings in Q4 2020 the company has spent over $50 billion on the division. Taking into account the total spending since acquiring Oculus in 2014, that figure could be close to $100 billion.