Spooky! (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.”

Rani Molla6h

Anthropic has surged past OpenAI in capturing business spending on generative-AI software

Last quarter, Anthropic attracted the lion’s share of trackable business spending on generative-AI software, according to new data from Ramp, a fintech company that provides corporate cards and expense management software for small firms and Fortune 500 companies alike.

The data showed that in the first quarter, Anthropic saw 37% of spending, its biggest share yet, versus 33% for OpenAI. Notably, the dataset doesn’t capture spending by Google or Microsoft.

OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, still leads in overall adoption at 81% of AI buyers, but Anthropic is catching up, at nearly 63% in March. Overall, more than half of Ramp’s customers currently pay for AI, up from just 18% two years ago.

Anthropic’s enterprise tools, including Claude Code and Cowork, have been making waves among the business class, sending its revenue soaring.

Anthropic’s revenue share is even higher among companies spending on AI for the first time.

“Anthropic has definitely been on a tear,” Ara Kharazian, Ramp’s economist, told Sherwood News. “Its increase in adoption rates has been driven by its ability to sell to less technical users and smaller contracts than it typically has.”

It’s notable that midway through the first quarter, Anthropic had a falling-out with one of its biggest customers, the US government, which near the end of February decided to shun Anthropic’s products and lean into working with OpenAI.

Jon Keegan

Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.7, with better coding, better vision, and occasional doom loops

The incremental update of Anthropic’s most capable public model includes steady improvements to coding and new ways to blow past your token budget.

Tunnel. Optical illusion. Abstract striped background. Vector illustration.

Jon Keegan8h

Report: Google ditches its objection to defense work, pitches Gemini to Pentagon

In 2018, Google employees protested against the company’s tech being used for the US military’s Project Maven — a drone targeting program — reminding the company of its “don’t be evil” motto.

After the controversy, the company declined to renew the contract with the Pentagon, drawing a bright line between Big Tech and the national security establishment.

What a difference a few years makes.

Google is now actively working to get its Gemini AI model to be used in classified national security settings, according to a new report from The Information. Seeking a similar deal to the one OpenAI hashed out with the Pentagon, Google reportedly wants a contract that allows use of Gemini in classified work, but with a prohibition on mass domestic surveillance and autonomous lethal weapons.

But Google is playing catch-up in a major way. Amazon and Microsoft both have been widely used for classified defense work, and contractors are already experienced in working with their cloud systems, while Google’s services have never been used in classified work.

Google and Pentagon Discuss Classified AI Deal as Company Rebuilds Military Ties

What a difference a few years makes.

1 in 5

Rani Molla10h

We knew Tesla had been off-loading its struggling “apocalypse-proof” Cybertrucks onto CEO Elon Musk’s other companies, but now we know just how many.

The EV company sold about one in five Cybertrucks registered in the US in the fourth quarter to Musk’s other ventures, according to Bloomberg, citing data from S&P Global Mobility. The lion’s share went to SpaceX, which accounted for 1,279 of the 7,071 total registrations, while another 60 went to xAI (now part of SpaceX), Neuralink, and The Boring Company. All told, these inter-company sales represent roughly $100 million in value, and a vital lifeline for a vehicle that has failed to gain traction with the public, forcing Tesla to scale back production.

Musk’s companies have continued to scoop up the stainless steel behemoths this year, with another 158 Cybertruck purchases in January and 67 in February.

Rani Molla13h

TSMC CEO on Tesla and Intel’s Terafab: “There are no shortcuts”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reportedly asked the chip industry suppliers for his Terafab chipmaking project to move at “light speed” in an effort to help Tesla and SpaceX manufacture the AI chips they need.

On the company’s last earnings call, Musk said chip supply would be the “limiting factor” for Tesla’s growth in about three or four years. During a presentation for Terafab last month, Musk said, “We either build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips.” More established chipmaker Intel has since joined the effort.

Still, the world’s largest chipmaker isn’t convinced that “light speed” is physically possible. Speaking on an earnings call this morning, TSMC Chairman and CEO CC Wei offered a blunt assessment of Terafab’s ambitious timeline: “There are no shortcuts.” According to Wei, the physics of a modern foundry, which he says takes roughly five years to build and ramp, remains the ultimate speed limit, regardless of the customer’s urgency. “That’s a fundamental of the foundry industry,” he said.

Wei noted that Tesla remains a TSMC customer.