In what is being framed as a reallocation of financial resources, Meta has officially shut down its Metaverse, despite pouring around $73 billion into the project. The trickle-down effect is going to be massive.
This development also comes at a time when OpenAI is shuddering its own billion-dollar flop, the Sora platform. Envisioned as an AI-generative video tool that bagged a $1 billion investment from Disney, as well as a licensing deal, the service never took off.
It’s the same story for the Metaverse. In hindsight, there were signs of its future fraying. Back in January, Meta laid off around 1,500 workers, the vast majority of which came from Reality Labs, home of the parent company’s Quest VR headset and the Horizon Worlds program.
Additional downsizing is now following the Metaverse’s disintegration. Almost 1,000 people have already been laid off. Even as Meta talks about where it plans to pivot, more layoffs could be on the horizon.
Beyond that, there are other questions floating around Silicon Valley. The most urgent among them: What is going to be the next thing? In California specifically, many believed VR tech could become more mainstream.
Others, meanwhile, have wondered whether the legalization of California sports betting apps would be 2026’s most notable development.
Some believe agentic AI will make the most strides. Those same people, though, likely thought generative AI video or the Metaverse were in the discussion, too.
So what, in fact, is next?
Meta is Diving Head-First into AI
Among all of the industries and innovations vying to be answers to the “What’s next?” question, Meta is prepared to bet big that AI progress will continue to be made.
Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-founder, has even said that he thinks AI is the “biggest part” of Meta’s future, according to the New York Times.
Apparently, Zuckerberg and Co. already have a grand plan in place. They are saddling themselves with more debt to expand their imprint on the AI race. They also plan to roll out an initiative aimed at helping “small businesses adopt AI tools.”
To what end Meta believes AI is its future remains debatable. They are still a social media giant. But as Mrinmay Dey and Katie Paul write for Yahoo Finance, the company seems to believe that investing in AI can almost 7x its market cap:
“Meta Platforms has offered top executives stock options that could pay out hundreds of millions of dollars and are tied to lifting its valuation six-fold to more than $9 trillion, in a bid to retain talent and spur aggressive growth in the AI era. The options are the social media giant’s first for its top brass and require steep stock milestones. They suggest Big Tech is rethinking incentives as it pours hundreds of billions of dollars into data centers and departs from its long-standing reluctance to raise debt to gain an edge in the AI race.
Meta’s stock will have to rise at least 88.2 percent [its most recent] closing price of $592.92 to $1,116.08 to unlock the lowest-priced tranche of stock options. A more than six-fold jump would be needed to unlock the most aggressive tranche, requiring the company’s shares to rise as high as $3,727.12, regulatory filings late on Tuesday showed.”
While stock options are not analogous to official projections, the incentives are proof of Meta’s approach. They would not put these numbers in place if AI wasn’t going to be its all-consuming aim in the years, maybe decades, to come.
Mark Zuckerberg is Putting Meta’s Money Where Its Mouth is
In what may have been another bad omen for the future of the Metaverse, Zuckerberg confirmed earlier this year that the company wouldn’t be doubling down on its AI investment. Literally.
During a January call with financial analysts, Zuckerberg said he expects Meta to spend $135 billion on building out its AI infrastructure. That is nearly double the $72 billion they put into AI projects in 2025, according to BBC’s Kali Hays.
Based on some of the other comments Zuckerberg made on that call, he seems to subscribe to the “AI will be bigger than the internet” theory to which many techies now subscribe. Doubling up Meta’s investment in its AI infrastructure would support that vision.
For the time being, however, it isn’t uncertain what sector will command the vast share of that investment. Zuckerberg has talked about fleshing out tools that increase the amount of work done by their software engineers.
As we mentioned before, Meta also seems to have agentic AI’s integration into small businesses on the brain.
Skeptics argue a pivot like this merely increases the likelihood of the AI bubble bursting. Those same people are probably feeling more confident in their stance following the Sora news.
Supporters, though, believe these sentiments are rooted in the struggle to understand just how limitless AI’s scope and scale seems to be. Truthfully, it could be years before we find out who’s right.
But with the shuddering of the Metaverse, Meta has made it clear which side of the fence it lands on: the one that features infinite growth from AI tools and processes through at least 2026.
