Despite recording its most profitable quarter since 2021, Meta continues to suffer significant financial losses from its ventures into the metaverse, with even larger losses anticipated in the coming year.
According to the company’s recent earnings report, Reality Labs, the Meta division responsible for its virtual and augmented reality projects, posted a loss of $3.7 billion in the second quarter of 2023 while generating a mere $276 million in revenue.
The company reaffirmed its commitment to increasing its investment in the metaverse. CFO Susan Li expressed that Meta expects the losses incurred by Reality Labs to “increase meaningfully” compared to last year when it hemorrhaged over $13 billion on these initiatives.
Outside of its metaverse ventures, Meta experienced a robust quarter, reporting $32 billion in revenue, marking an 11% rise from last year. Zuckerberg spoke highly of Reels, which are now achieving 200 billion daily views across Facebook and Instagram, owing to the company’s revamped focus on AI-driven suggestions.
The recent release of Threads and the company’s Llama 2 large language model were also points of pride.
Despite initial analytics data indicating a significant drop in Threads engagement since its launch, Zuckerberg stated that the app is attracting more daily return users than he had anticipated. He sees potential for the app to eventually garner a user base in the “hundreds of millions.”
Meta has confirmed that the majority of its recent layoffs, leading to the termination of over 20,000 jobs since the previous fall, have been “substantially completed”. Zuckerberg has previously referred to 2023 as Meta’s “year of efficiency”, in which he streamlined the company’s management structure and reduced the workforce.
The launch of Threads, which Zuckerberg stated was managed by a comparably small team, serves as evidence that the “cultural changes” at Meta are taking effect.
Via: Engadget
