Will Meta be just a name with the meta-world no longer their main focus? The answer is yes as thousands of Meta Reality Labs employees have been laid off and the studio that produced the games for Meta Quest has begun to close. The focus is now entirely on Meta Superintelligence Labs with the hope that Meta will become the first company to successfully develop artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Another nine-inch nail in Meta’s coffin is the closure of the Horizon Workrooms feature starting February 16th. Horizon Workrooms, which launched in 2021, was for business customers to conduct virtual reality meetings in a professional setting using Meta Quest. Along with its closure, the Meta Quest headset and Horizon services for business customers will also be discontinued starting February 20th, 2026.
At launch, Horizon Workrooms supported professional apps such as Zoom, Slack, Canva and Dropbox. Meta truly believes that in the post-pandemic future, employees will be comfortable conducting meetings in a VR world using 3D avatars. But the reality is that the headset has not been a hit, with the Apple Vision Pro itself not recording high sales after its launch two years ago, leading to production being ended early.
While Horizon Worlds may be waiting to close in a few years, the technology developed is now being used in the Ray-Ban Display and Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which currently dominate the smart glasses market.
