Zuckerberg Projects Poise Despite Dearth of Profit from Metaverse Project

Reality Labs, Meta’s division dedicated to creating a virtual world in which users can connect, work, and play, is still losing money. In today’s after-hours earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed the company is creating the basis for an “interesting 2030s.” In the first quarter of 2022, Reality Labs reported a $2.9 billion loss. “I recognize it’s expensive to build this, it’s something that’s never been built before. And it’s a new paradigm for computing and social connection,” Zuckerberg said. “So, over the next several years our goal from a financial perspective is to generate sufficient operating income growth from Family of Apps to fund the growth of investment in Reality Labs, while still growing our overall profitability.” One of the company’s near-term priorities, according to Zuckerberg, would be to improve hardware and Horizon Worlds, the company’s latest social VR product, to enable creators to make money. When Meta announced earlier this month that it will take nearly half of the profits from any things sold on Horizon as transaction fees, it sparked outrage. “Our other focus for Horizon is building out the metaverse economy, and helping creators make a living working in the metaverse,” said Zuckerberg. “We expect to be meaningfully better at monetization than others in the space, and we expect that should become a sustainable advantage for our platforms as they develop.” The startup is developing virtual ...