The news: Meta is cutting 1,500 jobs from its Reality Labs division, ostensibly to redirect resources toward wearables and offset its ballooning AI hiring and infrastructure costs, per Bloomberg.  

• The layoffs affect teams working on VR headsets and VR social networks, with Meta executives considering budget cuts as high as 30% for the entire metaverse division this year.
• Meta also closed three VR game studios, and its Supernatural app will no longer be updated.

Reality Labs has lost more than $70 billion since 2021, including a $17.7 billion operating loss in 2024, underscoring consumer fatigue with costly, niche hardware and a content ecosystem that has struggled to break out.