Saying that the future of the internet or social media is the ‘metaverse’, Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook to ‘Meta’ five years ago and invested billions of dollars in the metaverse. The metaverse designed according to his vision was a virtual world where people could meet each other in 3D space through their own avatars, talk, work or interact, dance/sing, and do everything from business to business. However, various international media outlets have reported that Zuckerberg has decided to close his ambitious metaverse project. 

Meta has announced the closure of its virtual reality (VR) social platform ‘Horizon Worlds’. This platform will not be available on Meta’s virtual reality devices from June 15. Meta has suffered huge financial losses in this project. It is estimated that Meta’s VR/AR department ‘Reality Labs’ has suffered a loss of around $80 billion since 2020. According to the company's fourth-quarter report released in January 2026, Reality Labs suffered a loss of $6.02 billion in that same quarter alone. Some media outlets have reported that this division suffers losses of $4 billion per quarter. 

The Horizon Worlds app will be removed from Meta's Quest store at the end of March and will not be available on virtual reality platforms from June 15, CNBC reported. According to journalist Lola Murthy, Meta has now shifted its focus from the metaverse to artificial intelligence (AI). “The metaverse has become a very expensive bet for Meta,” Murthy wrote, “Now the app will be limited to mobile, not VR devices.” Meta has invested more than $80 billion in the metaverse in the last 5 years, and Reality Labs is estimated to have lost $73 to $80 billion since 2020.

When Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, Zuckerberg expected the project to reach billions of users within 10 years and generate hundreds of billions of dollars in digital business. However, Horizon Worlds failed to attract users as he had hoped. The number of monthly active users on the platform never exceeded a few hundred thousand. Former Meta employee Vasuman Moja has revealed the inner reason for this failure. According to him, some of the company’s employees in management roles were unaware of how young people use Horizon Worlds technology. This is why some of the useful tools created by developers have not been used, Moja understands. 

According to a report written last month by Jay Peters, a journalist for The Verge, which broadcasts information technology news, Meta has also stopped creating new content for its virtual reality fitness app called ‘Supernatural’. The company has also decided to discontinue its ‘Metaverse for Work’ project. Peters revealed that Meta has cut about 10 percent of its Reality Labs staff and closed three VR studios. Among those laid off were employees of ‘Ouro Interactive,’ the studio that created content for Horizon Worlds. Apps and platforms such as Horizon Worlds, Horizon Workrooms, Horizon Venues, Quest VR Ecosystem, Meta Avatars, and VR SDKs were developed for the Metaverse. 

‘VR headset users spend 86 percent of their time in third-party apps,’ journalist Peters analyzes, ‘which is why Meta has now adopted a policy of supporting other developers instead of creating its own apps. Meta has not yet abandoned its plans to make new VR hardware, and the price of new headsets coming in the future may be more expensive than now.’ 

Samantha Ryan, vice president of Reality Labs, which is now focusing on the mobile market, said. Meta is now expected to increase investment in smartglasses and new AI models. According to analysts, Zuckerberg is starting to see AI as a new social network. This concept may include the facility for users to play games made by AI and share those games with their friends. The company recently acquired the AI-based social network ‘Moltebook’. Its team is about to be merged into the ‘Superintelligence Lab’. India Today reported that Meta's new AI model, 'Avocado', has been delayed due to internal testing failures. India Today reported that Meta's 'Ray-Bans' smartglasses have met expectations, with sales exceeding seven million. With the help of the agency,