It's sort of like how YouTube ran at a loss for a long time. The idea is to get ingrained in the market and make up the money later.

Right now Meta has the best VR / AR that is easily accessible. If some new idea or technology catapults VR into a more popular position, then Meta is in a prime position to take advantage.

Will that happen? I don't know, but Meta seems to think so.

I'm surprised they made 440m. However, investing in r+d is not unusual. This amount is not a huge investment for them based in overall revenue.

So what? R&D expenses aren't supposed to turn an immediate profit. Developing a new technology can take years before it's earning money, and some never do. I'm all aboard the "hate meta" train, but that's nothing.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but these companies need to pay more taxes. Losing $3.9 billion dollars on a stupid vanity project because they have nothing else to spend it on is ridiculous. Higher taxes would at least force them to be more efficient.

As others have said, the implication in this article's title is silly... Surely an r&d phase start easily explains this

What I'm curious about is how you spend that much money in such little time? Was that money actually spent or just committed?

You reckon Apple made money on it's VR division either?

Almost nobody is making big money on VR, because nobody wants to work together to make it into a widely compatible common standard. If you could have one headset that worked on all platforms, for a reasonable price, you'd get a lot more take up, and nicer headsets costing more would make more sense.

It's maybe unpopular, but I agree that if you're going to leverage your success to make a bet on the next big thing, VR/AR is a great choice. I agree it's inevitable that many computing interfaces will eventually become a personalized virtual space, and AR will eventually become a permanent way to add our "computer brains'" data to our vision.

Obviously we're not there yet. And there's always going to be a contingent that thinks that future will never come. But I do think it'll come, when that one thing or things we need VR/AR to do and can't seem to imagine life without are eventually found. Zuck doesn't know where the inflection point is going to happen but he's positioning Meta to be in the ideal place to own the space. He seems to know it may not happen for a long time. He's gambling he can afford to wait for it, which is a bet I'd take.

Why that’s a 10% return on investment!

Business lesson, : never build a factory because it won't pay for itself in the first year.

And yes I know it's hard to hear but Meta's vr is doing really well in the areas they targeted, industry, academia, and special use. This is likely to end up a profitable part of their business for a long time.

Zuck read Ready Player One and wants so badly to be James Halliday. He just wants to be loved. 🤣

its like they have too much money and they're burning it away on bad ideas. Imagine how much public housing that money could have built.

I know it's apples to oranges and what not, but there's a lot of life changing things you could do for a lot of people with that kind of money.

As a society the way we allocate resources is stupid.

Honestly love to see Meta losing money. Zuck is a parasite on this nation. A cancer.