Meta announced it's laying off more than 11,000 staff. It also said it anticipated making further big losses on metaverse projects.

• Meta has announced plans to lay off more than 11,000 employees, around 13% of the company's staff.
• The Reality Labs division, comprising Meta's metaverse and VR businesses, has lost $30.7 billion.

Meta says Reality Labs, the division comprising Meta's metaverse and VR businesses, is projected to keep losing money.

The company announced on Wednesday they were laying off more than 11,000 employees, 13% of the company's total staff.

In an SEC filing about the layoffs on Wednesday, Meta said the company "continued to anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year."

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From the start of 2019 to September 30, 2022, Meta invested $36 billion into Reality Labs, an Insider analysis found. Over the same period, the division made a cumulative operating loss of $30.7 billion.

Meta, Facebook's parent company, has since dropped off a list of the world's top 20 most valuable companies, which has been blamed on Mark Zuckerberg's investment into metaverse projects.

In a memo to employees on Wednesday, Zuckerberg told employees that the company was making cuts in every organization across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs. Meta wanted to ensure it was operating efficiently across both of them, he said.

The CEO added that although the company was seeing reductions across every organization, "some teams will be affected more than others."

Insider's Kali Hays previously reported that employees in the Reality Labs division had been expecting layoffs.

Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of normal working hours.