- Meta’s CTO said 2025 is crucial for Metaverse’s success or failure in a leaked memo seen by BI.
- Andrew Bosworth said Meta needs to “drive sales, retention, and engagement” for mixed reality.
- He added Reality Labs plans to launch “half a dozen” more AI-powered wearable products.
Meta’s chief technology officer thinks 2025 could be a make-or-break year for its metaverse bets, Business Insider has learned.
Andrew “Boz” Bosworth told staff this year is “most critical” to prove the metaverse is either a visionary feat or a “legendary misadventure,” according to an internal memo from November, viewed by BI.
In a post titled “2025: The Year of Greatness,” shared on Meta’s internal forum Workplace, Bosworth said its Reality Labs division plans to launch half a dozen more AI-powered wearable devices.
“We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR [mixed reality],” he wrote. “And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long-term plans to have a chance. If you don’t feel the weight of history on you, then you aren’t paying attention.”
He added, “This year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure.”
Bosworth also referred to Steven Levy’s book Insanely Great, which details how the Macintosh computer was created by small teams of one to three people. Later in the memo, Bosworth added that he has seen smaller teams “achieve better results than our more generously funded teams.”
Last week, the Meta CTO announced a series of reorgs in its Reality Labs division, which is responsible for its augmented and virtual reality products. As part of the changes, the unit that Reality Labs COO Dan Reed previously led will now be run by Meta COO Javier Olivan.
Meta also reshuffled the reporting lines of other Reality Labs executives, who now report to other key figures in Meta’s core business, signaling the division has become a bigger priority for the company.
Last week, Meta’s Reality Labs unit reported a record $1.08 billion in revenue in its fourth-quarter earnings. However, the mixed reality-focused division also recorded its biggest-ever quarterly operating loss of $4.97 billion. The division has racked up losses of about $60 billion since 2020.
Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from BI, made outside normal working hours.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the company’s smart glasses in an all-hands meeting last week, in which he told employees to “buckle up” for an “intense year.”
The company sold more than a million units of its AI-powered smart glasses in 2024, which Zuckerberg said was a “great start” but that it is “not going to move the needle and the business in a core way.”
He added that Meta’s trajectory this year will give it a good indication of whether smart glasses will become a “long-term grind” and whether, in the near term, AI glasses will become a “really prominent computing platform.”
Read the full memo Bosworth sent to employees:
2025: The Year of Greatness Next year is going to be the most critical year in my 8 years at Reality Labs. We have the best portfolio of products we’ve ever had in market and are pushing our advantage by launching half a dozen more AI powered wearables. We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR. And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance. If you don’t feel the weight of history on you then you aren’t paying attention. This year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure. I’ve been re-reading “Insanely Great,” Steven Levy’s history of the Macintosh computer. If you haven’t read it the book chronicles the incredible efforts of individuals working in teams of 1-3 to build a device that more than any other marked the consumer era of personal computing. What I find most fascinating about it is the way that even people who left the program on bad terms (it was not particularly well managed) speak about the work they did there with an immense sense of pride. There was a widespread cultural expectation, set by none other than a young Steve Jobs, that the work needed to be “insanely great.” On paper 2024 was our most successful year to date but we aren’t sitting around celebrating because know it isn’t enough. We haven’t actually made a dent in the world yet. The prize for good work is the opportunity to do great work. Greatness is our opportunity. We live in an incredible time of technological achievement and have placed ourselves at the center of it with our investments. There is a very good chance most of us will never get a chance like this again. Greatness is a choice. Many people have ben at the precipice of opportunity and failed to achieve. For the most part they failed to even challenge themselves. You should be doing the best work of your career right now. You should be pushing yourself to grow where needed and doubling down on your strengths. When you look back on this time I want you to feel like you did everything in your power to make the most of it. You don’t need big teams to do great work. In fact, it may make it harder. One trend I’ve observed the last couple of years is that our smaller teams often go faster and achieve better results than our more generously funded teams. Not only that, they are much happier! In small teams there is no risk of falling into bad habits like design by committee. You should be so focused on results that being in a bunch of docs or meetings is too frustrating to bear. The path is clear. You don’t need to come up with a bunch of new ideas to do this great work. Most people in the organization just need to execute on the work laid out before them to succeed. It is about operational excellence. It is about master craftsmanship. It is about filling our products with “Give A Damn”. This is about having pride in our work. I will close with an Arnold Glasow quote: “Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.” 2025 is the year. Let’s be on fire.
Are you a Meta employee? Got insight to share? Contact the reporter Jyoti Mann via Signal at jyotimann.11 or email at jmann@businessinsider.com. Reach out from a nonwork device.
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