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The total Meta investments were set in virtual and strengthened to the highest $ 100 billion this year, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the year 2025 would be a “specific year” for its smart glasses.
In her latest annual report, Mita revealed that she had invested 19.9 billion dollars in the laboratory department in the past year, which is a new rise after more than a decade of severe losses. Unity Development of Ray-Ban Meta smart glassesAnd Zuckerberg last week called “real blow”, as well as VR headphones, which were slower in takeoff. The company sold 1 million groups of Ray-Ban glasses in 2024, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Silicon -based Silicone and acquisitions have exceeded the development and acquisition of VR and AR products now 80 billion dollars since the initiative began in 2014 when it bought VR Oculus headphone, according to analysts and Times financial accounts based on the company's disclosure.
DeadThe annual report said that it expects the department's annual investments to increase in 2025, indicating that more than 20 billion dollars will be added to this total this year.
The numbers show the exceptional cost of Zuckerberg's long -term effort to build a new computing platform that can one day replace smartphones and reduce dead dependence on Apple and Google devices to distribute their applications and services. As part of this, META is racing to develop the most sophisticated AR glasses to the real world, as it unveiled the first model in Orion in September as the competitors of Apple and Google for similar products.
Matthew Paul, a technical investor and author, said: “Meta investments in reality laboratories are the watering of the eye, however, it is not clear whether it is unreasonable if you think it can build the works that you look forward to, which replace (Apple) iOS “. to Superstructure.
Mita refused to comment.
Three years after the parent company renamed on Facebook as Meta to highlight its vision to build “Metavers”, or the virtual world online, Litive Labs achieved 2.1 billion dollars in 2024, an increase of 13 percent in the previous year. Its operational losses amounted to a new increase of $ 17.7 billion last year, an increase of 10 percent.
The unit has achieved revenues of $ 10.1 billion since 2019, the first year that Meta began to reveal the financial results for that.
Over the past year, Zuckerberg has transformed the focus from talking about creating a filter -filled hint to promoting the progress of the development of smart artificial intelligence technology quickly.
In calling Meta's profits on Wednesday, he was enthusiastic about the expectations of “artificial intelligence glasses”, which are produced in partnership with Ray-Ban Mother Essilorluxotica.
“This will be a decisive year that determines whether we are on a road about hundreds of millions and in the end, billions of artificial intelligence glasses, and glasses are the next computing platform as we were talking about it for some time – or if this and said” it will be just a taller grind. ”
Lightweight glasses contain small cameras, microphones and compact speakers, allowing the younger to take pictures, listen to music and chat with AI's assistant. Meta plans to release a new version later this year, which features a small screen for the first time, previously FT.
Her Quest VR headphones, which cost $ 300 and the following for the latest model, are still struggling to achieve the prevailing call, as analysts and games estimated at about 30 million units have been sold so far. Zuckerberg said that the number of people using Quest devices and the horizon operating system “was growing steadily.”
Paul said that tens of billions of dollars from VR and AR were not different in the scope of other efforts made by major technology companies to enter new product categories, compare them with Microsoft with a Bing search engine, Amazon Alexa Assistant, Echo, Echo, and unit Google cloud computing.
The cumulative operating loss for META so far in reality laboratories is 75 billion dollars, compared to more than $ 50 billion for Amazon's Alexa and more than $ 30 billion to develop VR and AR from Apple, including VISION PRO headphones, which is a more expensive competitor to seek Meta.
“A lot of attention is paid to Zuckerberg's bet on reality laboratories, but this is partly because they choose to report it,” Paul said. “All their competitors have comparative investments that they do not appear.”
The Meta's Reality Labs is smaller than “hundreds of billions of dollars” that Zuckerberg said it intends to spend on AI's long -term infrastructure.
Despite these intensive capital efforts, Meta remains very profitable, thanks to its profitable advertising online. The net income fell 60 percent last year to $ 62.4 billion.
