Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion AR Glasses, as he makes a keynote speech through the Meta Join annual occasion, on the firm’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S. September 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Regardless of Meta’s profitable showcase of its Orion prototype AR glasses in September, the social-media large continues to lose billions of {dollars} 1 / 4 growing the nonetheless nascent metaverse.
Meta reported third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, by which it mentioned that its Actuality Labs unit, which develops augmented and digital actuality applied sciences, logged an working lack of $4.4 billion. Analysts polled by StreetAccount had been anticipating that unit to submit an working lack of $4.68 billion.
Actuality Labs income rose 29% year-over-year to $270 million within the third quarter, beneath analysts’ expectations $310.4 million. Actuality Labs primarily makes cash by promoting Meta’s Quest VR headsets and the Ray-Ban Meta good glasses.
Meta first entered the VR market in 2014 when it was nonetheless named Fb and bought the VR startup Oculus for $2 billion.
Fb co-founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes that growing VR and AR know-how might place the corporate to turn into a frontrunner in what might turn into the subsequent main private computing platform.
The funding has been expensive for Meta. After the corporate’s Wednesday earnings report, Reality Labs has an working lack of greater than $58 billion since 2020.
All that spending culminated in Zuckerberg’s demonstration of the Orion system on the firm’s annual Join convention in September.
Orion has generated excitement and helped carry spirits inside Meta about Zuckerberg’s bold plans. Meta hopes to capitalize off the surprising success of its Ray-Ban Meta good glasses, which it develops with eyewear large EssilorLuxottica, and pitch shoppers on a future Orion AR glasses after it courts builders to construct apps for the system subsequent yr, CNBC reported.
Additionally in September, Meta launched its latest VR headset, the Quest 3S, pitching it as a extra reasonably priced means for shoppers to expertise VR at a beginning worth of $299. Final yr, Meta launched the extra highly effective Quest 3 VR headset, which has a beginning worth of $499.