Mark Zuckerberg firmly believes that—in the case of his leg-less, blank-eyed, poorly-rendered chalk-drawing of a digital world often known as the Meta metaverse—sometime quickly, he’ll be the one laughing. Or a minimum of, that’s the gist of what he instructed traders in his firm’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

Zuck acknowledged that there are metaverse haters on the market, “I know that sometimes when we ship a product, there’s a meme [see: memes] where people say, ‘Hey, you’re spending all this money, and you’ve produced this thing.’” Yet the CEO and Facebook founder doesn’t see their level. “I think that’s not really the right way to think about it…I think the teams are making very good progress. And I think that this will be fundamentally important for the future. Nothing that we’re seeing suggests that that’s not going to be the case,” he stated.

Granted, observing the product itself makes it fairly tough to imagine that Meta’s Horizon Worlds or every other facet of the corporate’s metaverse will ever be “fundamentally important”—even with the graphics updates. But actuality (and the digital actuality) didn’t cease Zuckerberg from doubling and tripling down within the face of repeated questions concerning the massive bucks being funneled in the direction of metaverse initiatives. “I think it’s some of the most historic work that we’re doing that I think people are going to look back on decades from now and talk about the importance of the work that was done here,” he claimed. Sure.

For context, the corporate has dropped practically $9.5 billion on metaverse and digital actuality initiatives over the past 9 months, in line with its Q3 report. And about $3.7 billion alone between July and September. Meanwhile, Meta has solely introduced in $285 million in income from its VR work within the final quarter, and $1.4 billion within the fiscal yr thus far. It’s working and growing the metaverse at a large loss.

And all the different tentacle arms of Meta aren’t doing so scorching both. The firm’s income fell by 4% between this yr and final, and its general revenue dropped by 52%. Zuckerberg a minimum of acknowledged that his firm is going through “near-term challenges,” and admitted that points of Meta should shrink. “We expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even slightly smaller organization than we are today,” the CEO stated.

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Part of that shrinkage is more likely to be very literal. The firm’s soon-to-be-former CFO Dave Whener repeatedly referenced that Meta is “consolidating [its] office facilities footprint.” Which was one the few monetary choices mentioned within the investor name that appears logical, particularly contemplating that the corporate has absolutely embraced a flexible, remote work coverage.

Otherwise, Zuckerberg says Meta will focus its future investments on the AI algorithm behind Reels suggestions, advertisements and enterprise messaging (together with in-messenger advertisements), and—you guessed it—the metaverse.

Following the earnings report and investor name, Meta’s inventory fell by about 25%.