Meta: Zuckenberg would put the metaverse aside to devote his efforts to AI in 2026

“There is an idea going around that we are moving away from our commitment to the metaverse, and I want to say that is false” declared Mark Zuckenberg, CEO of Meta, during a report to investors in May 2023. The co-founder of Facebook, who renamed his eponymous company in reference to his eccentric vision of the “metaverse”, would display a completely different ambition for the year 2026 by planning up to 30% budget cuts for Reality Labs, the division of Meta dedicated to hardware and virtual and augmented reality software.

This is what the site reports Bloombergciting internal Meta sources close to the subject. Cuts of around 10% have reportedly been requested from all divisions of the American multinational – with the group dedicated to the metaverse development effort having been selected for a considerably more drastic regime. A logical consequence of the new direction given by Zuckenberg, much more interested in the rush towards artificial intelligence since the boom of OpenAI and Anthropic startups in recent years.

AI first

More than $60 billion has been invested in the metaverse effort since 2021, with more or less happy fruits: if the helmets Meta Quest and Meta Ray-Ban glasses have proven to be commercial successes, it’s hard to say the same about Horizon Worlds, the VR software that was once supposed to transform the user experience with virtual reality, but which looked an awful lot like a clone of Second Life half finished. Zuckenberg now wants to focus his company’s efforts on developing AI-related products; notably the house language model Llamawhose version 4 is struggling to find a place against the colossi ChatGPT from OpenAI and Gemini from Google.

And for good reason: Meta is one of the rare players to have generated concrete profits from its investments in artificial intelligence for user retention on its ecosystem (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp) and its sprawling advertising infrastructure. This is at least what is reported in the financial results of the second quarter 2025posting $18.3 billion in net profit, an increase of 36% compared to fiscal year 2024. Building on these strong results, Meta plans to invest up to $70 billion in recruitment and infrastructure dedicated to AI in 2026.

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