Meta Shifts Focus: Slashes Metaverse Spending to Fuel AI Glasses and Wearables Bet

Meta's pivot is official—the metaverse budget is getting a haircut. The company's big bet is now on the hardware you can actually wear: AI-powered glasses and next-gen wearables.

The New Frontier: AI on Your Face

Forget clunky VR headsets for a moment. The real game, according to Meta's latest strategic shuffle, is embedding artificial intelligence into the devices on your nose and wrist. It's a move from building virtual worlds to supercharging the real one you live in.

Follow the Money

The reallocation of resources speaks louder than any keynote. Funding is being pulled from the long-term, capital-intensive metaverse vision and funneled into the immediate race for AI-hardware dominance. It's a classic tech industry pivot—chasing the hotter, nearer-term market.

A Cynical Finance Take

Let's be real: this looks less like a visionary leap and more like a boardroom responding to shareholder pressure for a quicker return on investment. The metaverse was a money pit with a distant payday; AI wearables are a crowded market with a clearer, if fiercely competitive, path to revenue. Sometimes innovation is just smart resource management dressed up as a breakthrough.

The Bottom Line

Meta isn't abandoning the metaverse, but it's certainly demoting it in the funding queue. The message is clear: the future is wearable, intelligent, and—most importantly—needs to start paying its way sooner rather than later.

Meta’s Metaverse Bet Falters as User Growth Stalls

The company has spent more than a decade pouring billions into the metaverse, an initiative that was central to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the future of computing.

That ambition also led Facebook to rebrand as Meta in 2021, signaling a company-wide commitment to building immersive digital spaces.

However, momentum has stalled. Meta’s flagship VR platform, Horizon Worlds, has struggled to retain users, while sales of the company’s headsets have failed to justify the scale of investment.

Bloomberg reported Thursday that Meta plans to cut metaverse spending by up to 30%, sending shares up more than 3% as markets reacted positively to a potential recalibration.

A spokesperson said the company is not planning “broader changes,” declining to comment on whether the shift could include layoffs across metaverse-focused teams.

Mark Zuckerberg and Meta Platforms $META are reportedly expected to meaningfully cut resources for building the metaverse

Executives have reportedly discussed potential budget cuts as high as 30% for the metaverse group next year – Bloomberg pic.twitter.com/PAuEYuMnhN

Instead, Meta sees a faster path forward in wearable AI devices, particularly its new line of smart glasses, launched in September to stronger-than-expected demand.

The latest models feature an on-lens display capable of describing real-world surroundings, identifying objects, and translating text.

Analysts view the glasses as one of the first products to successfully blend AI assistance with hardware in a consumer-friendly form, a direction Meta now hopes to accelerate.

The MOVE reflects wider industry trends. Companies across the US and China are racing to bring AI-enabled glasses and compact wearables to market, betting that users will gravitate toward lightweight, always-on assistance rather than immersive VR environments.

Meta Shareholders Reject Call to Add Bitcoin to Company Treasury

In June, Meta investors overwhelmingly shot down a proposal urging the company to explore adding Bitcoin to its balance sheet, according to a May 28 filing.

The measure received just 3.92 million votes in favor, roughly 0.08% of all shares, while nearly 5 billion voted against it.

With CEO Mark Zuckerberg controlling 61% of voting power, the outcome was effectively predetermined.

The proposal came from bitcoin advocate Ethan Peck, who argued Meta should allocate part of its $72 billion cash pile into BTC as a hedge against inflation and diminishing real returns on cash and bonds.

Peck cited BlackRock’s guidance supporting a small Bitcoin allocation and submitted the proposal on behalf of his family’s Meta holdings.

He serves as Bitcoin director at Strive and has pushed similar campaigns at other tech giants.