Meta reportedly plans ‘large-scale layoffs,’ but what of its metaverse division?
Social media and tech large Meta is reportedly gearing up for “large-scale layoffs” this week amid rising prices and a latest collapse of its share value.
According to Wall Road Journal (WSJ) report on Nov. 6 citing folks accustomed to the matter, the deliberate layoffs might influence hundreds of workers in a broad vary of divisions throughout Meta’s 87,000-strong workforce.
It’s not at the moment understood whether or not the agency’s Actuality Labs division, which registered a $3.7 billion loss within the third quarter, would see employees cuts.
Final week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the corporate could be focusing its funding on “a small variety of high-priority development areas,” together with its Synthetic Intelligence (AI) Discovery Engine and its commercial and enterprise messaging platforms along with the Metaverse, stating:
“So which means some groups will develop meaningfully, however most different groups will keep flat or shrink over the following 12 months […] In mixture, we anticipate to finish 2023 as both roughly the identical measurement, or perhaps a barely smaller group than we’re right now.”
Through the earnings name, the billionaire entrepreneur appeared to double down on the agency’s investments in these areas, saying he believes they’re “heading in the right direction with these investments” and may “hold investing closely in these areas.”
Associated: Zuckerberg’s $100B metaverse gamble is ‘super-sized and terrifying’ — Shareholder
The report comes solely per week after Meta reported its third-quarter earnings, which missed income expectations and noticed an increase in its working prices. Its inventory value additionally took a battering, with shares in Meta at the moment priced at $90.79 — down 7.56% during the last 5 days and 73.19% year-on-year, according to Yahoo Finance.
The corporate seems to nonetheless be actively hiring into its metaverse division regardless, with its listing of job openings revealing 38 of its 413 listings are associated to Augmented Actuality and Digital Actuality.
Cointelegraph has reached out to Meta for clarification and whether or not there could be any adjustments to its metaverse division however didn’t obtain a right away response.