{"id":513335,"date":"2026-01-13T15:14:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T15:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/513335\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T15:14:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T15:14:19","slug":"meta-reportedly-laying-off-10-percent-of-reality-labs-shifting-focus-from-vr-horizon-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/513335\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta Reportedly Laying Off 10 Percent of Reality Labs, Shifting Focus from VR & Horizon Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta is slated to layoff around 10 percent of staff at its Reality Labs XR division, a New York Times <\/a>report maintains, as the company appears to be shifting focus to AI and smart glasses.<\/p>\n

The News<\/p>\n

According to three people with knowledge of internal discussions, cuts could come as early as today, and could affect more than 10 percent of the 15,000-person XR division.<\/p>\n

Layoffs are said to affect those working on VR headsets and \u201ca V.R.-based social network,\u201d the report maintains, suggesting cuts to staff developing Horizon Worlds.<\/p>\n

This follows a recent report that Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth called an in-person all-hands meeting for Wednesday<\/a>, January 14th, which is said to be the division\u2019s \u201cmost important\u201d of the year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses & Neural Band | Image courtesy Meta<\/p>\n

In addition to ramping up development on its next-gen AI, the report maintains Meta plans to reallocate some of the money from VR products to its wearables division, responsible for Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This comes as Meta has markedly reduced spending on VR over the past two years; the company has pulled back from funding eye-catching Quest exclusives in addition to reducing staff across its various XR studios, including its Oculus Studios publishing arm and the team behind VR workout app Supernatural. <\/p>\n

Additionally, the company shuttered game studios Ready at Dawn (Lone Echo, Echo Arena) in 2024 and Downpour Interactive (Onward) in 2025.<\/p>\n

My Take<\/p>\n

An all-hands meeting scheduled for Wednesday by Reality Labs chief and company CTO Andrew Bosworth can really only mean a few things: info on how the company is restructuring, and probably a good helping of morale boosting platitudes on how Meta isn\u2019t really abandoning anything, just making things more efficient and serving the greater goal of connecting people through technology. I hope to learn more soon from resultant leaks, blog posts, etc.<\/p>\n

And if Boz doesn\u2019t say this, I will: Meta\u2019s VR and more recent metaverse ambitions haven\u2019t ever turned a meaningful profit after having cost the company multi-billion dollar figures in quarterly operational budgets over the better part of a decade. And the company\u2019s smart glasses have. Investors can\u2019t stomach that forever.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) | Image courtesy Meta<\/p>\n

Comparatively speaking, smart glasses represent a massive return on investment for Meta. Unlike with VR headsets, the company doesn\u2019t need to seed studios with developer tools, organize big conventions to teach third-parties how to create content, buy studios, fund exclusive content. Meta\u2019s smart glasses don\u2019t even have an app store yet\u2014everything is first-party, and it probably won\u2019t for a while.<\/p>\n

In fact, even before the mere mention of an app store, Ray-Ban creator EssilorLuxottica is\u00a0ramping up production capacity to 10 million annual units<\/a>\u00a0by the end of 2026\u2014dwarfing the already 2 million units sold since Ray-Ban Meta\u2019s initial release in 2023.<\/p>\n

Granted, the lack of an app store is temporary for its smart glasses; its forthcoming AR glasses will most certainly need one when it arrive as early as next year. But in the meantime, Meta has become a class leader in smart glasses, making it seem almost unconscionable to investors to throw so much gas on VR when smart and AR glasses are nearly set to spontaneously combust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta is slated to layoff around 10 percent of staff at its Reality Labs XR division, a New…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":360404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[158,67,132,68,729,730],"class_list":{"0":"post-513335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-virtual-reality","13":"tag-vr"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115888446763565388","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}