• In a leaked memo seen by BI, Meta's CTO said 2025 is crucial for the metaverse's success or failure.
• Andrew Bosworth said Meta needed to "drive sales, retention, and engagement" for mixed reality.
• He added Reality Labs planned to launch half a dozen more AI-powered wearable products.

Meta's chief technology officer thinks 2025 could be a make-or-break year for the company's metaverse bets, Business Insider has learned.

Andrew "Boz" Bosworth told staff that this year is the "most critical" to prove the metaverse is either a visionary feat or a "legendary misadventure," according to an internal memo from November viewed by BI.

In a post titled "2025: The Year of Greatness," shared on Meta's internal forum Workplace, Bosworth said the company's Reality Labs division planned to launch half a dozen more AI-powered wearable devices — but did not specify a timeline or provide further details.

"We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR," he wrote, referring to mixed reality. "And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance. If you don't feel the weight of history on you then you aren't paying attention.

"This year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure."

Bosworth also referred to Steven Levy's book "Insanely Great," which details how the Macintosh computer was created by small teams of one to three people. Later in the memo, Bosworth added that he had seen smaller teams "achieve better results than our more generously funded teams."

Last week, he announced a series of changes in Meta's Reality Labs division, which is responsible for its augmented- and virtual-reality products. As part of the reorganization, the unit that Reality Labs' chief operating officer, Dan Reed, previously led will now be run by Meta's COO, Javier Olivan.

Meta also reshuffled the reporting lines of other Reality Labs executives, who now report to other key figures in Meta's core business, which signals the division has become a bigger priority for the company.

Last week, Meta's Reality Labs unit reported a record $1.08 billion in revenue in its fourth-quarter earnings. However, the mixed-reality-focused division also recorded its biggest-ever quarterly operating loss, $4.97 billion. The division has racked up losses of about $60 billion since 2020.

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment made outside normal working hours.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the company's smart glasses last week in an all-hands meeting, during which he told employees to "buckle up" for an "intense year."

The company sold more than 1 million units of its artificial-intelligence-powered smart glasses in 2024, which Zuckerberg said was a "great start" but "not going to move the needle and the business in a core way."

He added that Meta's trajectory this year would give it a good indication of whether smart glasses will become a "long-term grind" and whether, in the near term, AI glasses will become a "really prominent computing platform."Read the full memo Bosworth sent to employees:

Are you a Meta employee? Got insight to share? Contact the reporter Jyoti Mann via Signal at jyotimann.11 or email at jmann@businessinsider.com. Reach out from a nonwork device.