Facebook's Meta Platforms doubles down on metaverse ambitions

A month ago, Facebook-owned Meta Platforms reported a loss of $2.81 billion on $452 million in revenue from its VR division Reality Lab. The social giant has lost $0.5 trillion in market value since it rebranded over a year ago to reflect its focus on the metaverse.

Meta is not throwing the towel. The company is doubling down and plans to invest $10 billion on its metaverse to reflect the company's new vision. In the last year, Meta said it plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build a metaverse. Zuckerberg said that the metaverse is a major investment for the company and plays a vital role in the company going forward.

Meta said on Tuesday it had raised $10 billion in its first-ever bond offering to further ramp up its business and pursue its metaverse ambitions. The social giant can buy back some of its struggling shares and build a more traditional balance sheet with the help of the new fund.

Meta is not the only tech company that is buying back shares. Apple and Intel recently issued bonds, raising $5.5 billion and $6 billion, respectively.

Although still in a nascent stage, the metaverse can be described as a digital world where the real and virtual worlds converge into a vision of science fiction. You can also think of the metaverse as a virtual world where millions of people could work, play and socialize in immersive virtual environments and communicate across shared spaces across different platforms.

Meta also revealed that it lost 500,000 daily users earlier this year. The company reported a decline in its profit. Zuckerberg blamed TikTok, the short video platform we discussed above, for the user decline.

Meta posted a gloomy forecast and recorded its first-ever quarterly drop in revenue, despite growing fears of recession and competitive pressures on its digital ads sales.

Facebook's Meta continues to lose billions in pursuit of the metaverse, losing $6 B on its metaverse project and growing.