Social media giant Facebook said it will spend more than $10 billion to build out its vision for “metaverse” — a new phase of interconnected virtual experiences using technologies like Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR).
The firm will spend billions of dollars on Facebook Reality Labs, its metaverse division tasked with creating AR and VR hardware, software, and content.
“We are committed to bringing this long-term vision to life and we expect to increase our investments for the next several years,” the company wrote in its third-quarter earnings release.
Facebook sees AR and VR as being core to “the next generation of online social experiences”.
It has invested heavily in VR and AR, including buying companies like Oculus this year created a product team to work on the metaverse.
Even, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about the metaverse for the past several months.
Facebook earlier this month announced to hire 10,000 people to help the social network build the metaverse.
According to the company, the next computing platform has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social and economic opportunities
The company reported $29.01 billion in revenue in the Q3, up from $21.47 billion the same quarter last year.
The company said it expects Q4 revenue of $31.5 billion to $34 billion. Analysts were projecting sales of $34.8 billion.
Facebook said the forecast “reflects the significant uncertainty we face in the fourth quarter in light of continued headwinds from Apple’s iOS 14 changes, and macroeconomic and Covid-19 related factors”.
Facebook said in the third quarter it had 3.58 billion monthly users across its family of apps, up from 3.51 billion in the second quarter.
