Zuck Walks It Back After Metaverse Reality Check Signals “Huge Mistake”... (FINALLY!)

“I’ll never financially recover from this…”  - Zuck

And just like that friends, the $70B metaverse w*t dream… the one Zuch has been LARPing since 2021… is getting the Ozempic treatment. According to Bloomberg’s “anonymous sources” (so, the interns who don’t realize snitches get stitches), Meta is considering up to 30% cuts to its metaverse budget next year. Horizon Worlds, Quest software, all the virtual real estate no one visits… is all getting a hair cut. Translation: Zuck may need to consider another rebrand. 

(Source: Giphy) 

On the other hand, Wall Street reacted like Zuck just uninstalled Fortnite from Reality Labs entirely as shares popped 4%. (You could practically hear the faint whisper of investors saying “thank God”). What’s more is that execs are already being told to find 10% cuts across the board for the 2026 budget. Basically every team is entering the Hunger Games where the only winning strategy is pretending someone else’s department is unnecessary. 

(Source: Bloomberg)

Meanwhile, Reality Labs, the original money pit, has torched $70 billion since 2021 and produced what exactly? A VR chat app where no one has legs, headsets collecting dust in closets nationwide, and a workforce of very expensive engineers building a world no one logs into on purpose. In fact, the only worthy byproduct of Meta’s Metaquest is giving us Marcus the Worm (ifykyk). But even that’s not worth Zuck continuing to shovel money into this bonfire. 

Which is why now, he’s finally doing the thing analysts begged for three fiscal years ago:stop trying to reinvent the universe and maybe just focus on the products people actually use. To be clear, Meta isn’t quitting hardware… it’s just admitting that “Metaverse First” was a chaper, not a destiny. Case in point: Zuck just poached Alan Dye, the longtime Apple design chief behind the Apple Watch and Vision Pro interfaces. That’s not a guy you hire because you want to keep making clown goggles. That’s a guy you hire when you want your hardware to stop embarrassing you. Add to that the actual winner in Meta’s hardware lineup: Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses — over 2 million units sold, on track for 10 million per year by 2026. Translation: Users will not strap a brick to their face. They will, however, wear sunglasses that talk back (Spoiler: If you and the Best Buy salesman can get them to work LOL). 

Until they do this, I don’t want ‘em… (Source: Reddit) 

But alas, don’t be shocked if Meta’s FY26 reporting quietly blurs the lines between Reality Labs and the rest of the company until the word “metaverse” gets memory-holed Disney-style. Heck, Zuck even hinted at it: “Over time, we’ll probably need better ways to articulate the value across segments…”

In the end, back in 2021, Facebook renamed itself Meta to signal where the world was going. In 2025, the budget cuts signal where the world isn’t going. Whereas now, Meta is set on becoming an AI company that occasionally makes VR hardware and aggressively regrets a rebrand. And for the first time in awhile, investors actually like that story. Until next time, friends… 

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