According to financial reports from PA News on October 31, the latest earnings report from American tech giant Meta indicates that its metaverse business is still losing billions of dollars each quarter. Meta announced its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, stating that its Reality Labs division, which develops augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, experienced an operating loss of $4.43 billion. The loss was slightly smaller than the $4.68 billion expected by analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.
Reality Labs' revenue in the third quarter increased by 29% year-over-year to $270 million, below analysts' expectations of $310.4 million. Reality Labs primarily earns revenue through sales of Meta's Quest VR headsets and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
In 2014, Meta first entered the VR market when the company was still named Facebook, acquiring the VR startup Oculus for $2 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg believed that developing VR and AR technologies could position the company as a leader in the next major personal computing platform. This investment has proven costly for Meta. Since 2020, Reality Labs has accumulated over $58 billion in operating losses.