• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

Following reported plans to slash 30% of spending in its metaverse and wearables division, Meta has announced another round of Reality Labs job cuts, showcasing its increased investment in artificial intelligence (AI).  

According to The New York Times, Meta plans to cut around 10% of employees within the division who are working specifically on metaverse-focused products, including virtual reality headsets and the company’s Horizon Worlds social gaming platform. 

The potential job cuts, which would affect over 15,000 Reality Labs employees, come as Meta executive Andrew Bosworth has called a Reality Labs staff meeting for Tuesday, with some managers reportedly informing employees to “drop what they’re doing” in order to attend. 

Last summer, Meta divided Reality Labs into two distinct sectors – “Wearables” and “Metaverse” – in order to better “articulate the value that’s generated here across both segments,” according to Zuckerberg, who said he wants to better showcase the success of Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. 

However, Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse platform has not attracted the volume of users originally expected and the Quest headsets have not sold as strongly as other Meta hardware such as the AI-powered Smart Glasses.

In addition, Reality Labs has cost Meta over $70 billion over the past six years. 

Prior to last month’s reports about slashing one third of its metaverse spending, Meta was expected to invest around $60 billion more in Reality Labs through 2026.

But Meta is drifting away from its long-term metaverse goals and instead moving toward growing its AI business. The company recently committed to spending over $600 billion on AI development in the U.S. alone through 2028. 

In addition to spending $14.3 billion in Q3 to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI – a startup that operates a global workforce of contractors who label images, text and video for machine-learning applications -- Meta also signed a $27 billion financing deal with Blue Owl Capital to pay for its multi-gigawatt datacenter Hyperion and $1.5 billion on a data center in El Paso, Texas.

On Monday, Meta also announced a new initiative that maps out the tech giant’s decade-long plan to develop a global AI infrastructure, hiring Dina Powell McCormick as president and overseer of the initiative. 

“Meta is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time,” Meta’s social-media post reads, adding that engineering, investing and partnering efforts could play a strategic advantage in the burgeoning AI race. 

As Meta focuses more money and resources on working toward “superintelligence,” the company is continuing to develop new metaverse augmented reality wearable products, despite Reality Labs spending and job cuts.