In its quarterly financial results today, Meta revealed that its Reality Lab division saw its best ever Q4 revenue but, as before, this coincides with equally growing costs.
Meta’s Reality Labs division houses its metaverse and XR groups, and some of its AI initiatives.
During its Q4 2024 earnings call, Meta revealed that Reality Labs reached a record $1.08 billion in quarterly revenue, but also had its biggest quarter in terms of costs at $6.05 billion, resulting in a quarterly loss of $4.97 billion. This just barely beats the division’s previous revenue record of $1.07 billion in Q4 2023, and significantly beats it’s largest quarter for costs of operation in Q4 2023 at $5.72 billion.
During the company’s Q4 2024 investor earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the “number of people using Quest and Horizon [Worlds] has been steadily growing,” and also that he believes 2025 is the year the company’s investments in improving the look and feel of Horizon Worlds will begin to pay off.
Regarding Q4 2024, however, Zuckerberg alluded to Meta’s Ray-Ban smartglasses as the main driver of the revenue milestone, saying that “Meta Ray-Ban are a real hit.”
But revenue is only half of the story, as Reality Labs’ growth in costs have far exceeded its growth in revenue. In Q4 2024, the division cost the company $6.05 billion to run. When offset by its revenue, that still puts the Reality Labs $4.97 billion in the red for Q4 2024.
To date, Meta has spent a whopping $69 billion on Reality Lab since Q4 2020, but it has only brought in $9.19 billion in the same period.
While the numbers are staggering, Zuckerberg continues to insist that Reality Labs costs are long-term investments that will eventually pay off; he’s previously warned investors that Reality Labs’ costs would continue to grow, and ultimately might not flourish until the 2030s.
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