Meta Shifts Focus From Metaverse Missteps To Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Spending spree

Mark Zuckerberg’s grand experiment with the metaverse has proven to be one of the costliest technology flops in recent memory. In October 2021, the Facebook founder rebranded his company as Meta and poured nearly $90 billion into Reality Labs, the division tasked with realising his vision of immersive digital worlds. Despite this enormous outlay, the metaverse remains a distant prospect. Horizon Worlds, Meta’s flagship virtual reality platform, is largely deserted. Public interest in the term metaverse has dissipated, and Meta’s Reality Labs has posted an extraordinary $77 billion in losses over six years.

As 2026 approaches, Meta’s focus is shifting decisively away from the metaverse toward artificial intelligence. Reports suggest up to 30 per cent of Reality Labs staff may soon be made redundant. Zuckerberg is now investing tens of billions in Meta Superintelligence, a new unit aiming to develop so-called personal superintelligence. In June alone, Meta spent $14 billion acquiring Scale AI led by Alexandr Wang who has joined Meta to head this ambitious project. The company has also offered unprecedented pay packages to attract leading AI talent, including a four-year $250 million offer to a young coder and a six-year $1.5 billion arrangement for a returning engineer formerly of Thinking Machines Lab.

Zuckerberg’s ambition is to create AI systems surpassing human abilities in economically valuable tasks and capable of perpetual self-improvement. The aim is to provide each person with a personal superintelligence, ostensibly to help users achieve their goals and become better individuals. Markets, however, are sceptical. Meta’s share price has lagged behind major technology peers, falling 13 per cent in the last quarter despite remaining up by 8 per cent year to date. Investors are wary of the vagueness of Zuckerberg’s vision and the magnitude of spending.

Significant expenditure has also been committed to infrastructure. This year Meta is expected to invest up to $72 billion primarily to expand high performance data centres and secure the AI processing power essential for its plans. The scale is vast, with projects like Hyperion, a data centre anticipated to require as much energy as Greater London.

The rationale for this spending partly rests on a belief that AI will drive substantial user engagement for Meta’s existing platforms. In late 2025, Zuckerberg noted that AI powered recommendations contributed to a 5 per cent increase in time spent on Facebook and a 10 per cent rise on Threads. By increasing user engagement, Meta seeks to fortify its advertising-driven revenues.

While Meta’s previous bet on virtual reality proved expensive and largely unfulfilled, the company’s relentless push into artificial intelligence is now absorbing unprecedented resources. Whether this will prove visionary or another costly misstep remains uncertain, but the next few years will be pivotal for Zuckerberg’s legacy and for Meta’s standing in global technology markets.