Mark Zuckerberg's $47 billion metaverse bet will take at least a decade to be 'fully realized,' says Meta exec (2024)

Meta is still investing "significantly" in the metaverse despite losses of nearly $50 billion, according to an executive.

The head of Meta's global business group, Nicola Mendelsohn, said it will take a "good decade" to reach the company's "fully realized vision."

She made the comments in a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, adding that Meta was investing in both AI, as well as hardware, for the metaverse.

The tech giant has lost a cumulative $47 billion in its Reality Labs division since 2019, a previous Business Insider analysis of regulatory filings found. The division contains Meta's VR and metaverse operations.

Mendelsohn also said: "We've been on a journey of over a decade, both with the work that we're doing in our Reality Labs and also in the work and the investments that we're making in AI."

In April Mark Zuckerberg told investors that it's not pivoting to AI and that it's "been focusing on both" the metaverse and AI.

"A narrative has developed that we're somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision," he told investors.

Zuckerberg renamed Facebook as Meta in 2021 and said it would become a "metaverse company" in a promotional video.

The CEO was mocked after sharing a metaverse avatar of himself standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, with some likening the graphics to 1990s video games such as ZeldaorQuake. People also noted that the avatar had no legs, but it was later updated.

A designer who helped create the avatar said the team went through about

before a final version was approved, Bloomberg reported.

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.