2025 will be a ‘pivotal year’ for Meta’s augmented and virtual reality, says CTO

Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who was one of the company’s first 15 engineers, published a memo earlier this year forecasting that 2025 could be the year of greatness for Reality Labs, the company’s augmented and virtual reality unit. Or, it would be the year when the metaverse goes down as a “legendary misadventure.”

These days, Boz appears to be leaning towards its potential for greatness. But, the market will be the final determinant. 

“We’ll judge at the end of the decade, but this does feel like the pivotal year,” Boz said Thursday during a Bloomberg Technology interview. 

Boz noted that Meta’s Ray Ban AI glasses had been a breakthrough that excited both consumers and competitors. As of February, Meta has sold more than 2 million pairs since their October 2023 debut. Last fall, they outsold traditional Ray Bans, even before Meta rolled out AI features. 

Meanwhile, Google last month announced partnerships with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to create smart glasses based on Android XR. Apple is also reportedly making a push to release smart glasses in 2026.

“Suddenly, we go from toiling in the realms of obscurity to being very much in the world with a product that is very attractive to consumers, and thus competitors,” Boz said. “The clock has started on competition coming, and that just means that the progress we make in this year is of disproportionate value to any year before or after it closes.”

Still, competition among other incumbents means nothing if the market doesn’t adopt Meta’s AR and VR products, which is what would drive the industry to standardize the technology. 

“The market is actually, especially when it comes to hardware, a trailing indicator,” Boz said. “So you look for early indicators. To some degree, you do have to have a level of confidence and taste in-house.”

He said this was something he learned from Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer at Meta. 

“Sheryl used to always talk about how most companies don’t fail because they got beaten by a competitor,” Boz said. “Most companies fail because they didn’t execute their own plan correctly. And so what I try to do with the team is really focus us, not so much on the competitive landscape as on [whether] we’re executing to our standards.”

The Meta CTO said the company has “a set of ambitious plans for the year” that it is on track for.

“What we’ll know by the end of the year is whether we executed on our plan or not,” said Boz. “What we’ll know in five years time is whether that was enough.”