(Meta)

RIP the metaverse

Meta seems to be winding down its metaverse ambitions. We took a look back at what the company was going for.

1/13/26 3:14PM

Today Meta confirmed that it’s laying off more than 1,000 people in its Reality Labs division — the latest in a series of nails in the coffin for the company’s virtual reality and metaverse ambitions as it pivots to AI.

Considering the company changed its name from Facebook to Meta in 2021 to reflect its new goals, we thought we’d take a look back at what exactly the company and its CEO were going for way back when, and what’s happened since. (If Mark Zuckerberg happens to be reading this, perhaps he should consider renaming the company once again to something more like Met.ai.)

“In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine — get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create — as well as completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today,” Zuckerberg wrote in the heady days of 2021.

“In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up.”

Fast-forward a few years and... that hasn’t happened. Instead, the company is talking about AI a lot, like it once raved about the metaverse.

“It seems clear that in the coming years, AI will improve all our existing systems and enable the creation and discovery of new things that aren’t imaginable today,” Zuckerberg wrote in a mini manifesto this summer. “In some ways this will be a new era for humanity.”

And the company is now putting its money where the metaverse isn’t, as Zuckerberg warns that the dangers of not investing enough in AI outweigh the risks of investing too much.

The company is, however, continuing with its augmented reality glasses, but now instead of upselling their metaverse capabilities, Meta now emphasizes that they are “powered by AI” and how they help people navigate the real world.

Looking back at the metaverse

(Meta)

Here are some of the key milestones in the metaverse’s troubled history:

October 28, 2021 - Founder’s letter announcing the metaverse is the “next chapter” for the company, saying it “will touch every product we build.” Announces a rebranding as Meta.
February 17, 2022 - Meta says 10,000 worlds have been created in Horizon Worlds and it has 300,000 users.
May 18, 2022 - Calling for an open and interoperable metaverse, Meta President Nick Clegg says that “the global metaverse economy could be worth more than $3 trillion globally in a decade.”
June 22, 2022 - Meta rolls out expanded monetization for metaverse creators, including NFTs, which the company says are “essential for the metaverse.”
August 16, 2022 - In a Facebook post announcing Horizon Worlds’ release in France and Spain, Zuckerberg posts an infamous screenshot of his cartoonish avatar in front of the Eiffel Tower, which is widely panned.
August 19, 2022 - Zuckerberg acknowledges previous avatar was “pretty basic” and shares a more detailed avatar.
October 11, 2022 - Zuckerberg shows a video of Horizon Worlds avatars with legs, but it was a motion capture-generated “preview.”

no legs in metaverse — A live event streamed in Horizon Worlds. (Meta)

October 15, 2022 - The Wall Street Journal reports on internal Meta documents that show fewer than 200,000 monthly active users, with most users not returning after a month. According to the documents, only 9% of worlds built by creators ever saw at least 50 users, while most were never visited at all.
August 29, 2023 - Horizon Worlds avatars get legs.
September 15, 2023 - Meta brings Horizon Worlds to mobile.
September 26, 2024 - Meta discontinues the Meta Quest Pro headset after lowering the price a year earlier.
December 4, 2025 - Bloomberg reports that Meta is planning to slash metaverse and VR spending by up to 30%.
January 13, 2026 - Meta announces deep cuts to Reality Labs employees working on Horizon Worlds and the metaverse, but will “double down on bringing the best Horizon experiences and AI creator tools to mobile.”

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Rani Molla2/27/26

Meta reportedly strikes multibillion-dollar AI chip deal with Google as it struggles to design its own

Meta has signed a deal with Google to rent tensor processing units to develop new AI models and is in talks to buy the chips for its data centers, The Information reports.

The agreement comes on top of a recently announced “multi-generational” partnership with Nvidia and a chip supply deal with Advanced Micro Devices that could be worth more than $100 billion, as Meta scrapped its most advanced in-house AI training chip amid design challenges.

A Meta deal with Google, which has been rumored since November, would position the search giant more directly as a competitor to Nvidia in its core business of AI processors. Some analysts have said selling its custom chips to outside customers could become a business worth hundreds of billions of dollars for Google.

Google Strikes Multibillion-Dollar AI Chip Deal With Meta, Sharpening Nvidia Rivalry

Jon Keegan2/26/26

Delays in permitting, power, and zoning cause first drop in data center construction since 2020

Despite incredible demand, the number of data centers under construction in North America fell for the first time since 2020, according to new research from CBRE.

Total data center capacity under construction dropped about 5.6% year on year from 6.35 megawatts in 2024 to 5.99 megawatts by the end of 2025.

What’s causing the delay? Slow permitting, constrained supply chains, and growing public engagement with how deals are approved at the local level. Labor constraints also were cited in the report; a tight supply of skilled workers will increase costs.

US Data Center Construction Fell Amid Permit and Power Delays

-13%📱

Rani Molla2/26/26

Smartphone shipments are expected to decline 13% — the biggest drop ever — to 1.12 billion in 2026, according to new data from IDC, as the memory shortage drives up costs and prices for phones. The firm expects the average smartphone selling price to jump 14% to a record $523 this year.

The shortfall will mostly affect makers of lower-end smartphones, whose customers are more cost-conscious, while higher-end manufacturers like Samsung and Apple are likely to be more insulated from the pressure.

“The memory crisis will cause more than a temporary decline; it marks a structural reset of the entire market, fundamentally reshaping long‑term TAM (Total Addressable Market), the vendor landscape, and the product mix,” said Nabila Popal, senior research director with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. “We expect consolidation as smaller players exit, and low-end vendors to face sharp shipment declines amid supply constraints and lower demand at higher price points.”

Jon Keegan2/26/26

Google drops new Nano Banana

Google is hoping to recapture the viral boost it received when it released its Nano Banana image generation model. Nano Banana 2 arrives today, which Google has rolled into its Gemini app.

The new model promises more accurate text rendering and translation and “advanced world knowledge,” which “pulls from Gemini’s real-world knowledge base, and is powered by real-time information and images from web search to more accurately render specific subjects,” according to the company’s press release.

New creative controls let users keep groups of characters consistent across scenes, render images with higher resolution, and parse complex prompts.

The first version of Nano Banana became popular for making action figures out of users, and helped catapult the Gemini AI app to the top of the charts, bumping ChatGPT from its perch.

Nano Banana 2: Combining Pro capabilities with lightning-fast speed

New creative controls let users keep groups of characters consistent across scenes, render images with higher resolution, and parse complex prompts.

The first version of Nano Banana became popular for making action figures out of users, and helped catapult the Gemini AI app to the top of the charts, bumping ChatGPT from its perch.

Rani Molla2/26/26

Tesla’s ride-hailing service is looking a lot more like Uber’s than Waymo’s

Despite numerous promises about amassing a giant network of driverless cars, so far it seems like Tesla’s Robotaxis are a lot more similar to Uber’s plain old ride-hailing service than Waymo’s expanding autonomous fleet.

In California, where Tesla has its largest ride-hailing service, the company has taken no formal steps to gain approval for a truly driverless car service, according to Reuters. Throughout 2025, Tesla failed to log a single mile of autonomous test driving on state roads, and has not applied for the necessary permits to test or deploy vehicles without a human present. Currently, Tesla holds only a basic permit that requires a human safety monitor to remain in the driver’s seat at all times.

Currently, Tesla’s California Robotaxi service consists of roughly 300 Teslas operated by human drivers using the company’s supervised Full Self-Driving tech. In Austin, where the company has about 45 vehicles, Tesla made a big show earlier this year of announcing it was removing the safety monitors sitting in the front seats during rides. However, to date, only a handful of those vehicles have been reported to be actually operating without a safety monitor onboard.

In other words, it’s performing a service more akin to a tech-heavy Uber ride than the one operated by Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, which earlier this week announced it now has driverless rides available to the public in 10 markets. Even Uber is trying to put space between itself and the old driver-having Ubers of yore: this week its autonomous software partner said the company plans to launch a driverless service in London this year, with plans for 10 markets.

During its earnings report last month, Tesla said it planned to offer Robotaxi service in a half dozen new cities in the first half of this year, including Phoenix, Miami, and Las Vegas. Judging by Tesla’s progress so far, it’s likely those services will also feature a human in the front seat.

Tesla touts California robotaxis but does nothing to get permits

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