Last month the company’s market value dropped by $80bn and is now valued at $270bn, down from a trillion dollar a year ago.
The company is said to be focusing on core high-growth areas such as advertising and the metaverse but the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has warned that the company as a whole will remain much the same size over the course of 2023, or end up slightly smaller. Meta currently employs over 87,000 people.
While Meta is set to focus on AI and the metaverse, its metaverse division, Reality Labs, is reporting heavy losses - $9.0bn over the past year – and, according to Zuckerberg, those losses are expected to grow significantly.
Some investors have expressed alarm at the scale of investment being made in the metaverse and there’s a growing lack of confidence in Zuckerberg’s vision of the metaverse. In fact, some are even questioning the company’s entire approach to social media.
Zuckerberg has said that the investments being made are for, “the future of our business.”
Let’s hope he delivers, as with the company expecting to lose $10bn in ad revenue alone in 2022, there are those arguing that it’s heading in the wrong direction.