Meta finally backs away from the metaverse

We spent $73 billion and moved on

Meta didn’t announce the end of the metaverse. It just stopped acting like it mattered.

Last week, Meta cut about 1,500 jobs from Reality Labs, shut down multiple VR game studios, and put products like Workrooms and Supernatural into maintenance mode. The company has now spent roughly $73 billion on the division and never turned a profit, while global VR headset shipments fell 12% year over year in 2024.

This wasn’t one bad product cycle. Meta pushed an app store and platform tax before there was real demand, then acted surprised when developers and users stayed away. The goofy avatars, empty worlds, and safety problems were symptoms of a deeper issue: the company tried to scale a future people weren’t asking for.

AI and smart glasses now look like the escape hatch. Ray-Ban Meta glasses are selling, and AI apps already have distribution across Meta’s 3.5 billion daily users. VR never did.

When the headset comes off and the room goes quiet, what does Meta actually want to be building next?

AI in schools now needs approval

Turkey decided not to let classroom AI drift without supervision.

The Ministry of National Education released a national ethical rulebook for AI in public schools and set up a new oversight system that runs from the ministry down to individual schools. Teachers and administrators must now file an ethical declaration before using AI tools, starting February 2, through a central platform called YAZEK.

This is a bureaucratic move, but a deliberate one. Turkey is treating AI less like an experiment and more like regulated infrastructure, with paperwork, review paths, and named accountability instead of vague principles.

Requiring declarations before deployment will slow adoption, especially for teachers just trying tools out after hours under fluorescent classroom lights. It also creates a paper trail most countries still avoid, which could matter later when disputes or harm claims surface.

As more systems move into schools quietly, the real question is who else is willing to regulate before problems pile up

Less pilot talk, more rollout

This announcement is heavy on structure and light on hype, which is the point.

Matrix AI Network signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Western China Research and Development Promotion Association to support smart city systems and industrial AI across western China and Belt and Road regions. The partnership focuses on deployable AI and blockchain infrastructure in sectors like energy, manufacturing, transport, finance, and agriculture.

What stands out is the shift away from one-off pilots. Matrix is clearly trying to align with state-backed coordination bodies and sell itself as infrastructure that can be copied city by city, rather than as a flashy AI platform looking for use cases.

If this works, it signals where a lot of applied AI may quietly land next: regional development projects with governance baked in, not consumer apps. These deals move slowly, through conference rooms and paperwork, usually under bright office lights, but they tend to stick once approved.

The open question is whether replicable models stay flexible, or harden into systems that are difficult to change once they spread.

Prohuman team

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