TechFlow news, according to Cointelegraph, Meta's metaverse-related losses exceeded $3.74 billion in the second quarter of this year, bringing the company's spending on virtual reality operations to $7.7 billion so far in 2023.
Meta's second-quarter 2023 earnings report, released on July 26, showed an 11% year-over-year increase in revenue, reaching $31.9 billion. Its Reality Labs division, focused on the metaverse, generated revenue of over $276 million—its lowest in two years and nearly 40% lower compared to the second quarter of 2022.
Susan Li, Meta's Chief Financial Officer, said the decline in Reality Labs' revenue was due to decreased sales of its Quest 2 virtual reality (VR) headset. Expenses for the division rose 23% to $4 billion, partly driven by increased personnel costs.
During the earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the company is "focused on artificial intelligence in the near term and the metaverse in the long term," adding that these two areas are "overlapping and complementary."
Zuckerberg also noted that the company's AI model, Llama, is being used to develop a range of products designed to help users "create worlds, as well as avatars and objects that live in them," and said he would share more details later this year.
