Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision is over. Can Apple save it?

The CEO of the social media giant has spent billions on his virtual reality dream - and still no one understands the idea. Now the world's richest firm could change the game

In Meta's quarterly earnings call in April, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was on the defensive. The metaverse, the vision of a globe-spanning virtual reality that he had literally bet his multibillion-dollar empire on creating, had been usurped as the new hot thing by the growing hype around artificial intelligence (AI).

Critics had even noticed Meta itself changing its tune, highlighting the difference between a November statement from Zuckerberg, in which he described the project as a high-priority growth area" and a March note that instead focused on how advancing AI" was the company's single largest investment".