Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook for the metaverse. Four years and $70 billion in losses later, he’s moving on

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023. Meta Platforms Inc. introduced its latest lineup of head-worn devices, staking fresh claim to the virtual and augmented-reality industry just ahead of Apple Inc. pushing into the market. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Credit: David Paul Morris—Bloomberg/Getty Images)

In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg recast Facebook as Meta and declared the metaverse—a digital realm where people would work, socialize, and spend much of their lives—the company’s next great frontier. He framed it as the “successor to the mobile internet” and said Meta would be “metaverse-first.”

The hype wasn’t all him. Grayscale, the investment firm specializing in crypto, called the metaverse a “trillion-dollar revenue opportunity.” Barbados even opened up an embassy in Decentraland, one of the worlds in the metaverse. 

Almost five years later, that bet has become one of the most expensive misadventures in tech. Meta’s Reality Labs division has racked up more than $70 billion in losses since 2021, according to Bloomberg, burning through cash on blocky virtual environments, glitchy avatars, expensive headsets, and a user base of approximately 38 people as of 2022.