Meta’s Reality Labs has now lost more than $21 billion since the beginning of last year

Meta reported second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and stated that its Reality Labs unit, which develops digital actuality and augmented actuality applied sciences wanted to energy the metaverse, logged a $3.7 billion working loss.

The unit recorded $276 million in second-quarter gross sales, down from the $339 million in income it introduced through the first quarter. Analysts polled by StreetAccount had been projecting Reality Labs to file $421 million in gross sales and $3.5 billion in working losses.

Shares of Meta had been up about 5% after it reported an 11% pop in income as promoting rebounded and the corporate issued an uplifting gross sales forecast for the third quarter. It reveals that Meta remains to be very a lot an advert firm with a giant value heart.

Last 12 months, Meta’s Reality Labs unit misplaced a complete of $13.7 billion whereas bringing in $2.16 billion in income, which is pushed partly by the corporate’s gross sales of Quest-branded VR headsets. Reality Labs misplaced $3.99 billion through the first quarter. That places its complete losses at about $21.3 billion because the starting of final 12 months.

Meta stated in its earnings report that it expects working losses in its Reality Labs unit “to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and investments to further scale our ecosystem.”

In June, Meta introduced a VR subscription service dubbed Meta Quest+, which prices $7.99 a month and is appropriate with the corporate’s Quest 2, Quest Pro and upcoming Quest 3 headsets. The subscription service lets individuals entry two new VR video games every month, and they’ll be capable to play these video games so long as they’ve energetic subscriptions.

Also in June, Zuckerberg revealed particulars in regards to the Quest 3 headset simply days earlier than Apple introduced its Vision Pro VR and AR headset that can value a whopping $3,499 when it’s launched in 2024. The Quest 3 will likely be bought at a value beginning at $499 and is 40% thinner than the Quest 2 and can comprise a next-generation Qualcomm chipset, the corporate stated.

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