Zinger Key Points
- Meta's investment in VR and AR set to surpass $100 billion in 2025, Zuckerberg calls smart glasses a key focus
- Meta boosts Reality Labs spending past $20B in 2025, aims to cut reliance on Apple and Google devices
Meta’ Platforms Inc’s META aggregate investment in virtual and augmented reality will likely surpass $100 billion in 2025, coinciding with CEO Mark Zuckerberg hailing 2025 as significant for its smart glasses.
The Financial Times reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, that the company sold 1 million sets of its Ray-Ban glasses in 2024.
Meta’s investment in VR and AR product development and acquisitions has topped $80 billion since it launched the initiative in 2014, per the Financial Times.
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Meta invested $19.9 billion in its Reality Labs division in 2024, developing its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
Tech investor Matthew Ball estimates Meta’s total investment in Reality Labs to be $85 billion, compared with over $40 billion for Amazon.Com Inc’s AMZN Alexa and $20 billion-$30 billion for Apple’s development of its Vision Pro headset.
Three years after Facebook’s parent company rebranded itself as Meta, Reality Labs had revenue of $2.1 billion in 2024 with operating losses of $17.7 billion.
Reality Labs has generated $10.1 billion in revenue since 2019, the first year Meta started disclosing financial results for the unit.
Last week, Zuckerberg expressed conviction about its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Quest VR headsets.
Meta expects the division’s annual investments to increase by over $20 billion in 2025 as Zuckerberg targets a new computing platform that could reduce Meta’s dependence on Apple Inc’s AAPL and Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL Google’s devices for distribution of its apps and services.
It is worth noting that Meta’s first significant layoff in 2022, affected 11,000 employees, citing a post-pandemic slowdown. In 2023, Meta slashed an additional 10,000 jobs.
Wall Street analysts raised their price forecast on Meta after its quarterly print, expressing optimism over its AI investments, Llama upgrades, and ad tech.
Price Action: META stock is up 1.53% at $699.72 at the last check on Monday.
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