Meta’s Reality Labs posts $5 billion loss in fourth quarter

Meta’s Reality Labs posts  billion loss in fourth quarter


Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, demonstrates the Meta Quest Pro during the virtual Meta Connect event in New York on Oct. 11, 2022.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta continues to lose billions of dollars developing the virtual reality and augmented reality technologies needed to underpin the nascent metaverse.

The social media giant reported fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday and said its Reality Labs unit recorded an operating loss of $4.97 billion while generating $1.1 billion in sales. Analysts were projecting that unit to log a fourth-quarter operating loss of $5.4 billion on $1.1 billion in sales.

Reality Labs is Meta’s unit that makes the Quest family of virtual-reality headsets and Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg kick-started his company’s VR endeavors in 2014 when it acquired the startup Oculus for $2 billion. Since then, Zuckerberg has characterized VR and AR as central to his plans to develop the futuristic digital world known as the metaverse, which he has said represent the next major computing platform.

Wall Street has questioned Zuckerberg’s metaverse investment. Reality Labs has tallied an operating loss of more than $60 billion since 2020, as of Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings report.

Meta last week said it would invest between $60 billion and $65 billion in 2025 capital expenditures to expand its computing infrastructure related to artificial intelligence. Zuckerberg has previously said AI is core to the company’s metaverse efforts, including its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Meta develops that device with France-based EssilorLuxottica.

The social media company last year also unveiled its Orion prototype AR headset that is capable of overlaying digital objects on top of a person’s real field of view.

Meta released its latest VR headset, the $299 Quest 3S, during its September Connect event and pitched the device as a way for people to watch movies, play games and workout in VR.

Other tech companies are also investing in VR and AR.

Apple’s Vision Pro headset went on sale in the U.S. in February 2024 with a starting price of $3,499, and in December, Google and Samsung said they were working on a VR and AR device dubbed Project Moohan that will be available to buy in 2025 for an undisclosed price.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO

Big Tech earnings: Microsoft and Meta come into focus



Source

Ethereum turns 10: From scrappy experiment to Wall Street’s invisible backbone
Technology

Ethereum turns 10: From scrappy experiment to Wall Street’s invisible backbone

CANNES — Ten years ago, Vitalik Buterin and a small band of developers huddled in a drafty Berlin loft strung with dangling lightbulbs, laptops balanced on mismatched chairs and chipped tables. They weren’t corporate titans or venture-backed founders — just idealists working long nights to push a radical idea into reality. From that sparse office, […]

Read More
Crypto wobbles into August as Trump’s new tariffs trigger risk-off sentiment
Technology

Crypto wobbles into August as Trump’s new tariffs trigger risk-off sentiment

A screen showing the price of various cryptocurrencies against the US dollar displayed at a Crypto Panda cryptocurrency store in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025.  Lam Yik | Bloomberg | Getty Images The crypto market slid Friday after President Donald Trump unveiled his modified “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries. The price […]

Read More
Tesla must pay 9 million in damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says
Technology

Tesla must pay $329 million in damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

Tesla vehicles are parked outside of a dealership on July 24, 2025 in Austin, Texas. Brandon Bell | Getty Images A jury in Miami has determined that Tesla should be held partly liable for a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash, and must compensate the family of the deceased and an injured survivor damages of $329 million. The […]

Read More