Mark Zuckerberg urged to slash spending on Metaverse over 'supersized & terrifying' losses

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is under immense pressure to cut down the spending on the Metaverse as the investors said that his  experimental bets are causing "supersized and terrifying losses," according to Sky News. Metaverse is Zuckerberg's upcoming project that involves a network of shared, immersive virtual worlds where people can connect with friends, create and play games, work, and shop. Meta announced its plans to build a Metaverse earlier last year that it stated would be used by millions of its users. 

Reports now suggest that Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse has been marred with technical glitches, and has been incurring losses and failing to meet the targets set by executives. Reality Labs, Meta's division that has been working on the Metaverse, has sustained losses worth £3.16bn between July and September, the data projected by the outlet explained. This increased from £2.27bn loss incurred to the investors around the same period last year.

Amid the looming warnings that the losses linked to the Metaverse "will grow significantly" next years, the investors have also been reportedly dumping Meta's stocks, the report stated. But Zuckerberg has been willing to experiment with the project, as he told the outlet's reporters:  "It would be a mistake for us to not focus on any of these areas that will be fundamentally important to our future." The analysts, however, have called the Metaverse "one big gamble." 

Mark Zuckerberg 'not competent' to lead Metaverse: Elon Musk's ex-girlfriend

In August this year, Elon Musk's ex-girlfriend and Canadian singer-songwriter, Claire Elise Boucher, known professionally as Grimes, said that the Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was not competent to run the Metaverse. According to an entertainment website, Page Six, Grimes took a dig at Zukerberg's plan to expand the social media company into a metaverse pioneer. She said that the internet entrepreneur is "wildly underqualified" to steer the ship. "If Zuck 'oversees the Metaverse' it is dead and people who care about art and culture are building something else," the singer tweeted.

Notably, her statement came in response to a recent interview of Facebook CEO with American television presenter, Joe Rogan, where he spoke about his project. Sharing an image of Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar, she contested that the quality of the image exhibits Mark as "wildly underqualified" to build an alternate reality. "The quality of this image alone speaks to how wildly underqualified he is to build an alternate reality, literally every indie game looks better," she added.