How Meta’s $70 Billion Guess Compares to Tech’s Greatest Gambles — The Data

Is Meta Platforms’ $70 billion wager on the metaverse shaping up as the largest cash pit ever in tech?

Maybe. There are few precedents—if any—for an organization spending as closely as Fb’s proprietor is to develop a brand new tech platform, an immersive world Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisages as “the following chapter” of the web. And by Zuckerberg’s personal telling, it may very well be one other eight years or extra—the “finish of the last decade”—earlier than Meta begins to see a payoff. That begs the query of whether or not Meta will ever get sufficient of a return to justify the funding.

We determined to take a stab at evaluating what Meta is spending on its massive new wager to what different firms have invested on new platforms. It’s putting that previously, firms like Apple and Google developed groundbreaking new applied sciences—such because the iPhone and Android cell software program—whereas spending a fraction of what Meta is investing. And for each Apple and Google, these investments had been spectacular successes. Each firms continued to spend money on their new applied sciences, however a lot of that funding got here after launch, when the payoff was clearer.