Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is quietly scaling down his grand vision of a metaverse he was excited to show the world in 2021. Meta’s Reality Labs division has faced nearly $80 billion in cumulative operating losses since late 2020, leading to the discontinuation of the Horizon Worlds social platform from the Quest VR store by March 2026 and fully phase it out of its VR headsets by June 15, 2026. Horizon Worlds will remain available for mobile users, though.
In a community blog, Meta explained the decision in straightforward terms, stating, “We are separating the two platforms so each can grow with greater focus, and the Horizon Worlds platform will become a mobile-only experience.” The decision effectively ends the role of Horizon Worlds as a dedicated VR social destination, where users interacted via digital avatars in virtual worlds — a concept that Zuckerberg once positioned as the successor to traditional social media.
Meta’s Horizon Worlds to go away from VR headsets after major losses
In October 2021, Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook, the company, to Meta, declaring the company’s vision for the future. Back then, Meta stated officially that, “Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.”
The company had created Reality Labs as the division tasked with building VR hardware (like Quest headsets) and software (including Horizon Worlds). The Quest headsets caught momentum, but Meta’s metaverse ambitions couldn’t pull off the same. The Horizon Worlds social platform struggled with low engagement, never exceeding a few hundred thousand monthly active users according to reports. The expensive headsets and glitchy experiences failed to attract mainstream consumers, too.
Meta suffered staggering losses as a result. The Reality Labs division posted massive quarterly losses year after year, culminating in a record $6.02 billion operating loss in Q4 2025 alone, pushing the division’s total losses to nearly $80 billion since late 2020. The division suffered losses of $19.1 billion in 2025 alone, which was higher than the $17.7 billion recorded losses in 2024.
In essence, Meta burned through its revenue to keep the Metaverse alive – a product nobody wanted.
Meta shifted focus to AI and wearables
With Metaverse no longer a priority, the company laid off more than 1,000 employees in the division in early 2026, shutting internal VR studios and redirecting resources toward artificial intelligence and wearable devices, including the popular Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses developed with EssilorLuxottica — a product that’s also facing a controversy lately with regards to how it handles user privacy.
During the Q4 2025 earnings call, Zuckerberg acknowledged the ongoing burn but signaled optimism for the future. “I expect Reality Labs losses this year [2026] to be similar to last year, and this will likely be the peak as we start to gradually reduce our losses going forward while continuing to execute on our vision,” he had stated. With a renewed focus on the glasses and wearable section, Zuckerberg hinted at making the Horizon Worlds platform successful on mobile platforms.