Meta’s Reality Labs Spent $13.7 Billion Last Year on AR and VR.

Meta has not disclosed the headcount for Reality Labs

However, the company had 17,000 employees within the division before the layoffs of late last year. The majority of cash spent in this area goes to staffing and hardware development.

Susan Li, Meta CFO, stated that Reality Labs’ annual losses are expected to rise in 2023. “We’re going to keep investing meaningfully in this sector given the significant long-term opportunities that we see,” Li stated, calling it a “long-duration investment” in AR, VR, and metaverse software.

Meta intends to launch a next generation consumer headset in 2023. It will be similar to the Quest hardware but with mixed reality. Meta is the only company that is consumer-focused and will launch an AR/VR headset very soon.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, stressed the fact Reality Labs includes AR, VR, and metaverse-related technology (Horizon Worlds, etc.) during this week’s earnings conference. The company. Zuckerberg stated that software and social platforms are the most important parts of what they do. However, the software requires less capital to build than hardware.

Meta may publically de-emphasize metaverse efforts in order to please skeptical investors. However, the company seems ready to continue the course on VR/AR.

“… I have not seen any signals suggesting that we should change the Reality Labs strategy in the long-term,” Zuckerberg stated. “We are always changing the details of how we do this. I believe that we’ll definitely consider that part of our ongoing efficiency work.”