Over seventy billion dollars. That is what Zuckerberg and Meta poured into the metaverse. Not gradually, but at full speed, Meta chased an idea that sounded convincing. Mainly because no one could explain what it was meant to become. Zuckerberg doubled down so hard he even renamed his company after it. And now Meta is rolling that same project back. Quietly. Or at least as quietly as a multibillion-dollar retreat can be. Budgets shrink, priorities shift, and everyone in Silicon Valley sees what only a few say aloud: this ranks among the most expensive miscalculations in tech history. Hardly anyone is surprised.
But the metaverse is not the real story. The reflex behind it is.
People, teams and organisations often keep investing in things that have no future. Not because it is wise, but because stopping feels like failing. This mechanism, the sunk cost fallacy, is not limited to cash-rich tech companies. It lives in boardrooms, ministries, schools, and teams. And yes, in households where renovations spiral on and on. It lives in anyone who has ever thought: we’ve come this far, we can’t turn back now.
The tragic part is that this single argument can justify almost anything. The mistake is not the money already spent. The mistake is the question you no longer dare to ask: if I had to start today, would I still choose this?
Inside Meta, ambition, visionary speeches and a compliant market buried that question for years. Few people were willing to point out that the emperor had no legs, let alone clothes. Dissent inside the company seemed limited at best. Meanwhile, the reality stayed stubbornly the same. The metaverse had no product-market fit, no compelling use case and no audience waiting to meet as floating avatars without legs. I even saw a screenshot this week showing only 38 people online in this multibillion-dollar environment. Still, the machine kept running, because acknowledging losses is harder when the numbers still feel manageable. Until they no longer are.
And this is where it gets interesting: on the other side of wasted money sits something far less visible: good spending that only pays off later.
Think of investment in professional development, culture, expertise, infrastructure, school teams, coaching, time, calm, and solidity. None of this produces spectacular screenshots or viral demos. It does not make headlines. It cannot be packaged as a revolution. But it is precisely what makes organisations stronger and more resilient. These are investments that build capacity, not castles in the air.
The problem is that we easily confuse these two types of investment. The quick promise seems more attractive than the slow gain. The grand vision feels more exciting than the small, hard improvement. And almost no one writes a proud tweet about the project they decided to stop because it wasn’t working. Even though rationally, that is often the best decision you can make.
So the question is not whether Meta wasted money. That seems obvious now. The real question is how many organisations do the same thing, just on a smaller scale, without anyone noticing. How often do we continue with a programme that has no real support? And how often do we cling to ideas that reality has already overtaken, technically or pedagogically? How often do we add just a bit more budget to something that mainly exists because it once started?
That is why the metaverse story is a useful case. It shows that even giants with unlimited resources are not immune to psychological traps. It shows that stopping is not a weakness but, at times, a necessary restart. And it shows something even more important. The value of an investment depends not on what it cost, but on what it can still deliver.
If you apply that logic consistently, that one question becomes surprisingly liberating: if I had to begin today, would I choose this again? If the answer is no, stopping is not a loss. It is preventing the bill from getting even bigger.
And maybe that is the real lesson of the metaverse. Not that technology can mislead companies, but that even organisations with endless resources eventually have to do what we all do too rarely: adjust course because it is smart, not because it feels comfortable.
This was a mighty week of posts …
I think I marked everyone in my mailbox for later spreading of links on my website
At the moment I’m trying to cope with a set of completely new computer and IT equippment (what I had were all beyond their last day of use, almost 10 years old).
So the newbie posts will have to wait a bit. And besides education persons are overly busy at the moment, end of term, X-mas and all kinds of festivities, etc.
I’ve never understood how you manage to keep updated with new research and what is really new and not just repeted old findings. Admirable.
So thanks Pedro!
Yw!
You’re welcome and def worth it