The pivot has been made, the losses have been counted, and the question now is whether Mark Zuckerberg can succeed where he has just failed. Meta is shutting down Horizon Worlds on VR — Quest store removal in March, full VR termination June 15 — after close to $80 billion in losses. As the metaverse closes, AI opens — and the stakes are higher than ever.
The metaverse failure tested Zuckerberg’s credibility in a way that few corporate setbacks do. He had staked not just money but his company’s name and identity on a vision that did not materialize. Horizon Worlds attracted a few hundred thousand monthly users rather than the billion Zuckerberg projected. Reality Labs lost close to $80 billion without generating a clear path to profitability. The vision was sincere; the results were not.
The AI bet that now follows is better positioned in several respects. AI is already generating commercial value across industries — in products, in productivity, in content generation, and in scientific research. The demand for AI is demonstrable and growing. Meta’s competitive position in AI is meaningful, though not dominant, and the company’s scale gives it significant resources to bring to the competition.
Layoffs of more than 1,000 Reality Labs employees in early 2025 freed up capital and organizational attention for the AI pivot. Meta has since made clear that AI is not a side bet but the central focus of its next phase — integrated into its core products, powering its advertising business, and developing as a standalone product category through models and AI assistant features.
The question is whether Zuckerberg can execute the AI strategy with the discipline that the metaverse lacked. The metaverse vision was powerful but untethered from market reality. AI strategy, to succeed, will need to be anchored more firmly in what users want and what the market rewards. If the $80 billion metaverse lesson has been genuinely absorbed, the AI chapter may read very differently.
