Remember when Mark Zuckerberg was so convinced we’d all be hanging out in virtual reality that he literally renamed his entire company after it? Well, plot twist: investors just threw Meta a $69 billion party for basically saying “never mind” about the whole thing.
Here’s what went down: Bloomberg dropped a report saying Meta’s executives are planning to slash their metaverse budget by 30%. And Wall Street? They lost their collective minds in the best way possible. Meta’s stock jumped 4% in a single day, adding $69 billion to the company’s value and pushing it to a cool $1.68 trillion total.
Let’s be real here – this is the corporate equivalent of your friend finally admitting that expensive hobby they wouldn’t shut up about was actually terrible. You know, like when they spent thousands on that pottery wheel and now it’s holding up their TV.
The numbers tell the whole story. Since 2021, Meta’s Reality Labs division (that’s their fancy name for “metaverse stuff”) has burned through $70 billion. That’s not a typo. Seventy. Billion. Dollars. To put that in perspective, you could buy Twitter twice with that money. Oh wait, someone already overpaid for that too.
The really telling part? On Meta’s last earnings call, the word “metaverse” didn’t come up once. Not even a casual mention. It’s like when you pretend you never had that embarrassing phase in high school – except this phase cost $70 billion and was broadcast to the entire world.
What’s Meta pivoting to instead? AI, obviously. Because if there’s one thing tech companies love more than the next big thing, it’s abandoning the last next big thing for the newer next big thing. It’s like musical chairs, but with billions of dollars and way more awkward explanations to shareholders.
The market’s reaction makes perfect sense when you think about it. Investors have been watching Meta pour money into virtual worlds while everyone else was making bank on artificial intelligence. It’s like showing up to a gold rush with a metal detector while everyone else brought excavators.
Zuckerberg’s original vision was that we’d all be working, socializing, and basically living in virtual reality. Instead, most people can barely be bothered to put on VR headsets for more than 20 minutes before getting motion sick or remembering they have actual lives to live.
The timing couldn’t be more perfect either. While Meta was building virtual conference rooms, ChatGPT showed up and made everyone realize AI was the actual future. It’s like spending years perfecting your flip phone right as the iPhone launches.
So here we are: Meta’s stock is soaring because they’re finally admitting what everyone else figured out ages ago. Sometimes the best business decision is knowing when to cut your losses and chase the shiny new thing everyone else is already chasing.
The lesson? Even tech billionaires can be wrong about the future. The difference is when they’re wrong, it costs $70 billion and becomes a case study in business schools forever.