Meta plans to lay off hundreds of metaverse employees this week

Meta’s Reality Labs team is expected to lose around 10 percent of its staff, with layoffs concentrated on the division’s metaverse employees, as reported by The New York Times. The layoffs are apparently a side effect of Meta’s AI ambitions, which are pulling focus away from its virtual reality division.

According to the Times, Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, called a meeting for Wednesday that he “urged staff to attend in person,” saying it will be the “most important” meeting of the year. Bosworth oversees the Reality Labs division, which employs about 15,000 people. Unfortunately, layoffs to Meta’s VR team may not come as a surprise — last month, Bloomberg reported Meta was planning to cut its metaverse budget by 30 percent.

The layoffs to the metaverse team come as Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses increasingly steal the spotlight from its VR headsets. Even if AI wasn’t Meta’s top priority right now, the metaverse itself has also struggled to catch on over the years, and many users seem to already think the VR social platform is dead.

Meta declined to comment.