In a 2022 interview, Meta Platforms (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined a bold vision: by the end of the decade, the company aimed to have around a billion people in the metaverse, each engaging in hundreds of dollars of commerce. In that interview, Zuckerberg talked about people building their own avatars, then spending currency on in-game items like clothes, virtual concerts, and houses, creating a “massive economy around this.” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said at the time it “could be [worth] trillions,” speculating the napkin math around a “$3-4 trillion economy in the metaverse.”
As of May 2025, this vision remains a work in progress, with significant strides made alongside notable challenges. Meta is one of the few major tech companies where virtual reality and the metaverse are still a priority, with many trillion-dollar tech companies abandoning the area. Meta, however, is potentially uniquely positioned to capitalize, as one of their most valuable “assets” is the billions of people around the globe using their products.
