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NEW LONG FORM VIDEO: Meta Burned $90 Billion on the Metaverse… For Nothing
On October 28, 2021, Mark Zuckerberg stepped onto the stage at his annual developer conference. Mark always looks calm. That’s part of his persona. But behind the scenes, things were not going well. A former employee named Frances Haugen had leaked internal documents to The Wall Street Journal, and they were deeply damaging.
The documents showed that Facebook knew its products, including Instagram, were harming teenage girls and spreading misinformation, and that leadership was aware of the risks.
When leaders face crises like this, they sometimes try to shift the narrative by promising a bold new future. Zuckerberg’s answer was something called the metaverse. He envisioned a new kind of virtual world where people would live, work, and socialize in digital spaces. He was so committed to the idea that he renamed the entire company Meta and pledged to invest tens of billions of dollars into building this future.
At the time, the vision seemed plausible. Virtual reality was gaining momentum. Oculus was already on the market. Apple was rumored to be developing its own headset. Movies and tech leaders were all talking about immersive digital worlds.
But four years later, the metaverse dream had largely collapsed. Meta had burned through roughly $90 billion chasing it, and the technology world had shifted its focus elsewhere.
The future wasn’t the metaverse. It was artificial intelligence. This is the rise and fall of the metaverse.
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