A rough day for the metaverse
What Meta's Reality Labs cuts signal. Also: Anthropic's reorg, Microsoft's AI data center pledges.
It’s Tuesday, Jan 13th. Apologies for the late send, and please bear with me over the next couple of weeks as I write the newsletter from Europe.
3 things you should know:
Jokes aside, people are already doing cool things with Claude Cowork, but are also running into issues.
Instagram expanded access to the app’s algorithm for editing: prompt yours via the Reels tab in the top-right corner.
Overheard: “Credit card panel data for OpenAI/ChatGPT continues to look tough.”
“A more focused road map”
To anyone who has been paying attention, it's clear the VR headset market hasn’t become what Meta hoped it would by now.
IDC estimates that global shipments of VR/MR headsets in 2025 hit a seven-year low of just 4.3 million. Apple is rumored to be pulling back from the category after the tepid reaction to the Vision Pro. Meta didn’t ship a new Quest model in 2025, and its senior leaders barely made a peep about VR throughout the whole year. When I asked Mark Zuckerberg how he was feeling about the category in September, he shifted the conversation to how Meta sees a growth opportunity for its Roblox rival, Horizon, on mobile phones.
There were other, more subtle signs that today’s layoffs at Reality Labs were coming.
