Meta lost $19.1 billion on VR last year despite the mother of all pivots to AI including plans for AI-generated gaming
A bottomless pit of money. This, as far as one can tell, appears to be the situation at Meta. Its latest earnings report (via TechCrunch) reveals the company burned another $19.1 billion on VR last year. Oh, and at the same time, it is reportedly planning to invest $135 billion in AI this year to include AI-generated games. Sorry, what?
Meta's losses on VR and what was once going to be the life-altering Metaverse are actually up on 2024, when it hosed $17.7 billion on the endeavour. Just for context, the VR division at Meta generated $2.2 billion in sales in 2025, which, to be frank, is more than I'd have thought.
So, what's next for Meta's VR vision? More losses, of course. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the division was expected to make a similar loss in 2026, albeit perhaps not quite as much, thereby making 2025 the peak, or should that be trough, for VR losses at the company.
“For Reality Labs [Meta's VR division], we are directing most of our investment towards glasses and wearables going forward," Zuckerberg said on an earnings call with investors, "while focusing on making Horizon a massive success on Mobile and making VR a profitable ecosystem over the coming years.”
Perhaps the real context here is that Meta's revenues are nevertheless massive and still increasing, with the company raking in $200.97 billion overall in 2025, 22% up on 2024. That's why Meta can afford to blow all this cash.
That was mostly funded by an overall increase in ad impressions of 12% and an increase in price per ad of 9%.
Anywho, it seems that the company is still going to invest staggering sums in VR for the foreseeable future, despite the apparent fact that Zuckerberg and Meta are currently engaged in the mother of all pivots away from the Metaverse in favour of AI.
"Soon, we’ll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive, and only possible because of advances in AI," Zuckerberg said in that earnings call.
What exactly will that be? AI that can “generate great personalized content,” apparently, that builds on the AI-generated Vibes feed it already offers users.
The Verge says Zuckerberg has "hinted" that it will include allowing users to create games using language prompts, which can then be shared with friends. “There’s definitely a version of the future where any video that you see, you can tap on and jump into it and experience it in a more meaningful way,” Zuckerberg said.
So, there you have it. Meta will apparently blow another $20 billion, or thereabouts, on VR glasses this year and then let you turn videos into games of some kind. What to make of all this is up to you. It's all too much for my tiny brain to compute.