Meta's fresh layoffs trigger major sell-off

Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META) began slashing implicit 1,000 jobs from the company’s Reality Labs division.

This is portion of a program to redirect resources toward AI wearables and telephone features from virtual world and metaverse products.

The metaverse push, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg once described arsenic “the adjacent section of the internet,” has proven particularly costly for the company.

Related: The Metaverse Promises a Big Bang. What If It Was Just a Publicity Stunt?

Meta has poured tens of billions of dollars into the inaugural since 2021. However, it has struggled to pull meaningful idiosyncratic adoption.

In fact, Reality Labs posted a $4.4 cardinal nonaccomplishment successful the 3rd 4th alone.

Meta’s ambitions erstwhile extended to nonfungible tokens (NFTs), with a 2022 rollout aimed astatine embedding integer collectibles crossed Instagram and Facebook. This was a portion of its broader virtual satellite strategy.

The tools allowed users and creators to mint, showcase, and commercialized NFTs connected supported blockchains, including Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (POL) and Flow. The institution pitched the determination arsenic a mode to enactment artists and turn the creator economy.

That momentum faded rapidly arsenic the crypto marketplace slumped successful 2022. NFT involvement waned, engagement remained limited, and gross opportunities failed to materialize. By March 2023, Meta confirmed it was shutting down each NFT-related efforts.

By 2025, the company’s priorities shifted decisively toward generative AI and consumer-facing AI products, marking a wide departure from its earlier metaverse narrative.

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In crypto markets, tokens erstwhile tied to metaverse platforms collapsed overnight aft the news.

As per CoinMarketCap, Render (RENDER), the largest remaining metaverse-linked token, with a marketplace headdress of $1.15 billion, had dropped by 7.96% successful the past 24 hours, trading astatine $2.21.

Sandbox (SAND) and Decentraland (MANA), erstwhile known arsenic aboriginal metaverse leaders, were trading successful the reddish arsenic well. SAND was down 2.43% overnight, trading astatine $0.1243, portion MANA had dropped by 1.97% to commercialized astatine $0.1478.

Stacks (STX), the second-largest Metaverse token by marketplace cap, fell by 3.12% to commercialized astatine $0.3787, portion Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) was down by 5.51% to commercialized astatine $1.01.

At property time, the full capitalization of metaverse tokens stood astatine $5.74 billion, having dropped by 4.11% successful 24 hours.