Meta burned $19 billion on VR last year, and 2026 won’t be any better
Earlier this month, Meta laid off 10% of the staff for Reality Labs, its virtual reality unit, reportedly cutting as many as 1,000 employees. Now, in a development that seems directly related, the company has revealed that the unit lost many billions of dollars last year. On Wednesday, Meta’s earnings report showed that its embattled virtual reality business had lost some $19.1 billion in 2025, which is slightly more than it lost in 2024 (that year, the losses hovered around $17.7 billion). In its fourth quarter, the unit posted a loss of $6.2 billion, the report shows. Those losses stood against what the unit generated in sales: $955 million in Q4 and some $2.2 billion throughout 2025. During the company’s earnings call on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg struck a tone of…
