Meta’s investment in VR and smart glasses on track to top $100bn

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The total investment in Materi in virtual and Augmented Reality is set as $ 100 billion at the top this year, as its CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that 2025 would be a “defined year” for its smart glasses.

In his latest annual report, Meta revealed that it had invested 19.9 billion in its reality labs last year, a new high after heavy loss for more than a decade. Unit Its ray-disorderly meta develops smart glassesWhich Zuckerberg called a “real hit” last week, as well as its quest VR headsets are slow to shut down. A man, who is familiar with the matter, says the company sold 1 million sets of his ray-ban glasses in 2021.

Silicon Valley-based company VR and AR product development and acquisition have now surpassed $ 1 billion since the start of the initiative in 20 years when it was purchased by VR Headset maker Okulus, based on the publication of the analysis and the publication of the Financial Times.

MeetIts annual report states that they expected the annual investment of the department in 2021, suggest that more than $ 20 billion will be added this year.

Statistics shows the extraordinary expense of Zuckerberg’s long -term efforts to create a new computing platform that one day can replace smartphones and reduce meta dependence on Apple and Google devices to distribute their applications and services. As part of this, Meta is racing to develop more sophisticated AR glasses that overlooking the contents of the real world, unveiling its prototype Orion in September, working on similar products similar to products.

“Meta investments in reality labs have tears, it is not clear if they believe it can create the business that it can create, which is replacing [Apple’s] IOS, ”a technology investor and author Matthew Ball said MetversThe

Meta refused to comment.

Three years after Facebook’s main organization, the main body of the “Metavers” or online virtual world creating the vision of the online virtual world, the reality labs brought $ 2.1 billion to $ 2.1 billion in earnings in 2024, which increased 13 percent of the previous year. Its operating losses increased by 10 percent last year to the new height of 17.7bn.

The unit has generated $ 10.1BN since 2019, the first year that Meta has begun to publish financial results for the meta.

For the past one year, Zuckerberg has quickly removed the focus from talking about creating an avatar-filled metvers in progress in developing smart glasses powered by AI technology.

On Wednesday, he was enthusiastic about his “AI glasses” aspect of earning meter, which was produced with partnership with Esilorlaxotica, the main organization of the verdict.

“It will be a defined year that determines that we are several hundred million and in the end, we are talking for a while like the next computing platform of billions of AI glasses and glasses – or if this is what it is. “Just going to be a long grind,” he said.

Lightweight glasses are built on small cameras, microphones and speakers, which allows the wearer to take photos, listen to music and chat with the AI ​​assistant. Meta is planning to release a new version later this year, which is the first time a small display feature, FT has reported before.

Its Quest VR Headsets, for which the latest model has $ 300 or more prices, is still fighting to achieve mainstream application, analysts and games developers estimate about 30MN units that have been sold till today. Zuckerberg said that the number of people who use quest devices and Horizon operating system “is increasing continuously”.

The ball said that Meta and AR were not different with other efforts to enter new product categories from VR and AR, it compares Microsoft with Microsoft and compares with its bing search engine, Amajon’s Alexa assistant and echo devices. Google’s Cloud Computing Unit.

He assumed that Meta’s collective operating loss would be $ 75BN in the reality labs, more than $ 50 billion for Amazon Alexa, and more than $ 30 billion for Apple’s VR and AR development, with its Vision Pro Headset, more expensive competitors.

The ball said “a lot of attention is paid to Zuckerberg’s bet in reality labs but this is partial because they like to report it separately,” said the ball. “All their competitors have investment that they are comparable that they are not sponsor.”

Materous Reality Labs Investments are smaller than “several hundred billion dollars” that Zuckerberg said he had planned to spend “long” in the AI ​​infrastructure.

Despite this capital-intensive effort, meta remains very profitable for its profitable online advertising business. Knit income increased by 605 percent last year to $ 62.4bn.