Round 10 p.c of Meta’s Actuality Labs division, which develops its XR services, might be laid off starting on Tuesday, as reported by Bloomberg.
Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton confirmed the layoffs in a press release to The Verge: “We mentioned final month that we had been shifting a few of our funding from Metaverse towards Wearables. That is a part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the financial savings to help the expansion of wearables this yr.”
Meta’s Ray-Ban sensible glasses have stolen the highlight from its VR headsets in recent times, particularly with final yr’s launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display. As Bloomberg additionally reported on Tuesday, Meta could also be planning to double its production capacity for its AI sensible glasses by the top of 2026 in response to surging demand. So, it may not come as a shock that Meta’s pivoting to focus extra on wearables, and fewer on the largely-forgotten metaverse.
Meta is just not abandoning the metaverse fully, although. In response to Bloomberg, an inner memo from Meta’s chief expertise officer Andrew Bosworth additionally talked about a shift within the firm’s metaverse technique. Slightly than being a VR-first social platform, the metaverse might be centered extra on cell gadgets transferring ahead.
