In October 2021, Facebook changed its name to Meta, signaling its focus on the future with Metaverse-related projects.
Reality Labs is the Meta division of the company that supervises its virtual and augmented reality projects. According to the latest earnings report of Meta, the unit lost $3.7 billion during the second quarter of 2023 and generated just $276 million in revenue.
“As our investments in AI continue, we remain fully committed to the metaverse vision as well,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the report. He added, “We’ve been working on these two major priorities for many years in parallel now, and in many ways, the two areas are overlapping and complementary.”
According to the chief financial officer of Meta, Susan Li, Reality Labs’ expenses totaled around $4 billion in Q2 2023, an increase of 23%. This was “due to lapping a reduction in Reality Labs loss reserves in Q2 of last year as well as growth in employee-related costs.”
“We had a good quarter. We continue to see strong engagement across our apps and we have the most exciting roadmap I’ve seen in a while with Llama 2, Threads, Reels, new AI products in the pipeline, and the launch of Quest 3 this fall,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO.
As the reports released on July 26, Meta picked up speed in the second quarter as revenue increased 11% to $32 billion and profit jumped 16% to $7.8 billion.
“I’ve said on a number of these calls that the two technological waves that we’re riding are AI in the near term and the metaverse over the longer term,” Zuckerberg said.
The stock of Meta was 1.39% higher on Wednesday and went to 6.89% in after-hours trading.
Also Read: Meta’s Metaverse Unit Faces Massive $4 Billion Loss in Q1 2023!
