“You had a a good run, Reality Labs” - said no one ever

Meta is reportedly chopping about 1,500 jobs from Reality Labs… roughly 10% of the division… which is basically Zuck saying “thanks for the memories, the goggles didn’t hit.” Keep in mind, this is the same Reality Labs that’s burned north of $70 billion since 2020 trying to convince normal people they wanted to attend meetings as legless avatars. Spoiler: They did not. 

(Source: Imgflip) 

So now Meta is doing what it does best when a bet goes sideways… cutting heads, rewriting incentives, and pretending this was always the plan. Translation: Mark Zuckerberg is officially over the metaverse phase and going full-send into AI mode. For more context, Reality Labs employees found out this week that their all-hands meeting… lovingly described internally as the “most important of the year”... is also apparently the one where you should definitely sit closer to the aisle. The cuts are expected to hit VR hardware teams and Meta’s VR social network. As for the money, it’s not being saved… it’s being re-aimed. 

Case in point: While VR gets the axe, Meta is shoveling tens of billions into AI infrastructure, data centers, and smart glasses. Zuck isn’t trimming fat. He’s reallocating protein. The goal now is “superintelligence,” which sounds fake until you realize Meta has already spent $14.3 billion on Scale AI and paid another $2B+ for Manus just to make sure it doesn’t miss the next wave. 

(Source: New York Post) 

The real interesting part is how cleanly the story flipped. Reality Labs was once the future of Meta. It was the moonshot… and the thing that justified the name change. Now it’s the line item everyone pretends not to make eye contact with in budget meetings. Meanwhile, Meta is rolling out a new performance system called Checkpoint, which is basically Hunger Games but with stock comp. Roughly 20% of employees get labeled “Outstanding” and can earn up to 300% of their bonus. The rest get a congrats on being excellent, and a 1.15x to keep grinding. Ooof. 

And yet, if there’s a theme about this whole Zuck mood swing here, it’s that Reality Labs employees are learning the oldest lesson in tech: You don’t get fired because you failed. You get fired because the company found something it likes more LOL. So now, Meta is doing what the market rewards. And that's to kill the lagging bet, and double down on the one Wall Street actually believes in. 

(Source: Giphy) 

So yeah… pour one out for Reality. Sure, they tried to build a new world. But AI builds leverage… and right now, Mark is choosing leverage. Life is a b*tch sometimes. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Meta as mentioned in the article.