Actually, Mark Zuckerberg didn't burn $80 billion on the metaverse

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Reality Labs unit has lost more than $80 billion. But only some of that money was spent on metaverse projects. Much of it went to hardware projects like the Orion prototype he wore onstage in 2024.

Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images

• It's easy to dunk on Mark Zuckerberg and Meta for burning $80 billion on the metaverse and then moving on.
• But that's not exactly true.
• What is true is that Zuckerberg used to spend a lot of time talking about the metaverse.