Meta's fresh layoffs trigger major sell-off

Group 1 - Meta Platforms Inc. is cutting over 1,000 jobs from its Reality Labs division to redirect resources towards AI wearables and phone features, moving away from virtual reality and metaverse products [1] - The company's metaverse initiative has been costly, with Meta investing tens of billions of dollars since 2021, yet it has struggled to gain user adoption, resulting in a $4.4 billion loss in Reality Labs for Q3 [2] - Meta's previous ambitions included non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as part of its virtual world strategy, but interest waned following the crypto market slump in 2022, leading to the shutdown of all NFT-related efforts by March 2023 [3][4] Group 2 - The shift in priorities towards generative AI and consumer-facing AI products marks a significant departure from Meta's earlier focus on the metaverse [4] - Following the news of Meta's job cuts and strategic shift, metaverse-linked tokens experienced a decline, with Render (RENDER) dropping by 7.96% and other tokens like Sandbox (SAND) and Decentraland (MANA) also trading lower [5][6] - The total market capitalization of metaverse tokens fell by 4.11% in 24 hours, standing at $5.74 billion at the time of reporting [6]