Meta’s metaverse money pit sinks by $3.7B as CEO eyes Threads retention

Metas metaverse-related losses topped $3.74 billion over the 2nd quarter with the Big Tech player spending $7.7 billion on its virtual reality business up until now in 2023. Its second-quarter 2023 outcomes released on July 26 saw Meta report an 11% profits gain compared to the very same quarter last year, amounting to $31.9 billion.Its metaverse-focused Reality Labs earnings topped $276 million, its least expensive in 2 years and a nearly 40% drop compared to Q2 2022. Metas section leads to millions since Q2 2021 with added highlights on Reality Labs Q2 2023 earnings and operating losses. Source: MetaOn a revenues call, Metas monetary chief Susan Li stated Reality Labs income drop was because of decrease sales of its Quest 2 virtual truth (VR) headset. The departments expenses were up 23% to $4.0 billion partially caused by a development in staffing costs.Reality Labs operating losses are set to increase through 2023, Meta stated. It mentioned VR-related item development efforts and further investments in its metaverse as the reason for the losses extending.On the call, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said the company is focusing on artificial intelligence “in the near term and the metaverse over the longer term.” He restated Meta is “fully committed” to its metaverse alongside its AI investments and said the two locations are “overlapping and complementary.” He included its AI design Llama is being used to build a variety of items that will help users “develop worlds and the avatars and things that inhabit them as well” and stated he would share more later on in the year.Related: Already explored– Apple Vision Pro fails to impress Mark Zuckerberg Metas stock price got on the earnings and is up over 7% in after-hours trading to around $320 according to Google Finance data. Meta shares have actually gained nearly 140% year-to-date however are still off from their September 2021 all-time high of over $378. Metas stock price surged to over $320 in after-hours trading on July 26. Source: Google FinanceZuckerberg mentioned its July 6 launched platform Threads was “seeing more people coming back daily than I d anticipated” and stated Meta was focused to start with on Threads user retention, then growth and would later on concentrate on monetizing the platform.The comments come the very same day as a July 26 report from information analytics firm Similarweb that declared Threads users have declined 60% from launch.Threads peaked at 49 million daily active users for its Andriod app on July 7 however was up to 12.6 million daily active users by July 23 with users investing less than five minutes a day on the app over the previous week.Similarweb said it does not yet have the daily numbers for Apple iOS users however suspects a similar “boom-and-bust pattern.” Web3 Gamer: Apple to repair video gaming? SEC hates Metaverse, Logan Paul trolled on Steam