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An attendee wears a Meta Platforms Inc. Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality (VR) headset at the Telefonica SA stand on day two of the Mobile World Congress at the Fira de Barcelona venue in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023.

Angel Garcia | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta is spending billions of dollars a quarter to fulfill CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of a futuristic virtual world that he calls the metaverse.

Despite the company’s commitment to making its founder’s dream come true, the virtual reality market is contracting.

Sales of VR headsets and augmented reality glasses in the U.S. plummeted nearly 40% to $664 million in 2023, as of Nov. 25, according to data shared with CNBC by research firm Circana. That’s a much steeper drop than last year, when sales of AR and VR devices slid 2% to $1.1 billion.

The two-year decline underscores Meta’s continuing challenge in bringing the immersive technology out of a niche gaming corner and into the mainstream. While Zuckerberg said, in announcing Facebook’s pivot to Meta in late 2021, that it would likely take a decade to reach a billion users, he may need to start showing more optimistic data to appease a shareholder base that’s been critical of the company’s hefty and risky investments.

Thus far, there hasn’t been a breakout success — or killer app — to validate Zuckerberg’s vision. Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which is developing VR and AR technologies, lost $3.7 billion in the third quarter on sales of $210 million. In total, the division has lost about $25 billion since the beginning of 2022, shortly after Zuckerberg renamed his company.  

Meta declined to provide a comment for this story but pointed to a blog post on Monday from Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth, who runs Reality Labs. Bosworth called artificial intelligence and the metaverse Meta’s “two long-term bets on technologies of the future,” and said they’re beginning to “intersect in the form of products accessible to huge numbers of people.”

“Making long-term bets on emerging technologies isn’t easy,” Bosworth wrote. “It’s not guaranteed to work, and it’s certainly not cheap. It’s also one of the most valuable things a technology company can do — and the only way to remain relevant over the long run.”

Meta is currently the leader in the VR market, with sales of its Quest-branded headsets representing the bulk of the U.S. market by a large margin, said Ben Arnold, Circana’s consumer technology analyst. Sony released its second-generation PlayStation VR2 headset earlier this year but hasn’t picked up much market share due in part to the device’s reliance on the PlayStation 5 video game console, Arnold said.

Sony didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Arnold attributed the market’s rough year to a dearth of new stand-alone VR headsets that could excite users and a continued lack of a breakout app that has wide appeal among mainstream consumers.

Meta debuted the Quest 3 VR in October, starting at $499, or $200 more than where the predecessor Quest 2’s base model was initially priced in 2020. Sales have at least been strong enough to help lift the VR market during the pivotal holiday period, even if the year overall has been week.

Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer of Facebook, speaks during Meta Connect event at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California on September 27, 2023.

Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images

During an eight-week period spanning October and November, sales of VR headsets in the U.S. were $271 million, a 42% jump from the $191 million generated during the same period last year, Circana data showed.

Arnold said that the design and appeal of VR headsets has significantly improved over the years, and that “the products are progressing along a timeline that makes sense.”

“If there’s a challenge there, it’s how do you get great content for this hardware, how do pull some of those levers that enable a developer to put more resources into building a game or some kind of experience,” Arnold said. “That’s a little bit about the economics, and it’s about how many people are gravitating towards this platform or this particular device, and if I’m a developer, is that worth my while.”

Meta is hoping the Quest 3 will inspire developers to create compelling apps and games that utilize the device’s so-called passthrough feature, which allows for augmented reality experiences that mix digital graphics with real-world experiences. Numerous developers who attended Meta’s Connect conference in September said the passthrough technology represented an upgrade from the Quest 2.

Bosworth wrote in his blog post that, “Within months of the Meta Quest 3 launch, seven of the top 20 apps are mixed reality apps.” He added that Meta is “seeing strong signals that people really value these experiences.”

Bosworth said Meta is testing generative AI technologies in its newest Ray-Ban smart glasses to help people translate foreign languages “or come up with a funny caption for a photo you’ve taken.”

“Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses will let AI see the world from our perspective for the first time,” he wrote.

The company’s second-generation Ray-Ban glasses were released in October with a starting price of $299. Meta is hoping the devices offer another path for Zuckerberg to realize his metaverse vision, which has thus far been tethered to Quest headsets.

Here comes Apple

Heading into 2024, the big wild card for the VR market is Apple.

In June, Apple unveiled its Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, which is slated to hit the market next year at a starting price of $3,499.

The premium price suggests Apple is targeting early adopters, developers and companies as potential customers, VR developers told CNBC at Meta’s Connect event. VR enthusiasts are excited about Apple’s first headset, considering the company’s smashing success with consumer devices, and Vision Pro’s potential to integrate with products like the iPhone and iPad.

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Vision Pro’s debut could also play a pivotal role in bolstering the fledging VR and AR market in 2024, according to research from IDC. In a September news release about the state of the market, Ramon Llamas, IDC research director, said, “Apple’s entry next year will bring much needed attention to a small market, but it will also force other companies to compete in different ways.”

Andrew Boone, an analyst at JMP Securities, said he was initially so impressed by Apple’s Vision Pro demos that he began to worry about Meta’s future in the market.

His thought at first was, “Apple was so far ahead that maybe Meta would just throw in the towel,” Boone said.

“I think my tone on that has changed,” he said. “I think the price was too high to actually get mass demand, so Zuck is going after a different version of this. Clearly, the Quest is more game focused.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook: We're excited about what we're seeing from Vision Pro developer labs

Boone says there’s “enough differentiation” between the Quest and Vision Pro devices that they can cater to different crowds, though he expects to learn a lot more about the VR market over the next 12 months.

Rolf Illenberger, CEO of German VR startup VRdirect, said companies are excited about the Vision Pro “because it’s Apple,” but there’s a perception that it’s more of a “lifestyle” device. Apple’s demos highlighted more entertainment-friendly uses like the ability to watch movies on a giant virtual display. Apple describes the Vision Pro as a “spatial computer,” capable of blending the physical world with digital content and visuals.

“That product is premium, so it also got people thinking about what does an ultra-premium experience look like and what are the use cases that arise from that,” said Circana’s Arnold.

High hopes for the enterprise

Illenberger sees the potential for Meta’s Quest 3 to make a splash in the enterprise for tasks like workforce training, onboarding and marketing. He noted that the device is $500 cheaper than the Quest Pro, which was released in 2022 as more of a business-focused device, and has many of the same features.

The consumer is more challenging. Aside from “early adopters and hardcore gaming kids,” Illenberger says, “there’s not enough convincing arguments to spend even $500 on VR.”

In the corporate VR market, Meta and Taiwan’s HTC are the leading suppliers of devices. Pico-branded headsets from TikTok parent ByteDance “are losing more and more ground,” Illenberger said. ByteDance has reportedly canceled the next version of its Pico headset and is instead shifting resources to another device more similar to Apple’s Vision Pro.

ByteDance didn’t respond to a request for comment.

When it comes to selling to businesses, Illenberger says Meta is starting to benefit from its name change in late 2021. He said that Zuckerberg’s rebranding has had a “psychological” impact on some companies who feel more more comfortable purchasing the devices without the tarnish of Facebook’s brand and the numerous associated data privacy scandals

“Rebranding the company to Meta was a genius move,” Illenberger said. “Not because he’s claiming the market for his company, but people more and more forget that Meta is in fact Facebook.”

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Americans are heating their homes with bitcoin this winter

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12 hours ago

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November 16, 2025

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Americans are heating their homes with bitcoin this winter

As winter’s chill settles in across the U.S., and electricity bills become a bigger budgeting issue, most Americans will rely on their usual sources of warmth, such as home heating oil, natural gas, and electric furnaces. But in a few cases, crypto is generating the heat, and if some of the nascent crypto heat industry’s proponents are correct, someday its use as a source within homes and buildings will be much more widespread.

Let’s start with the basics: the computing power of crypto mining generates a lot of heat, most which just ends up vented into the air. According to digital assets brokerage, K33, the bitcoin mining industry generates about 100 TWh of heat annually — enough to heat all of Finland. This energy waste within a very energy-intense industry is leading entrepreneurs to look for ways to repurpose the heat for homes, offices, or other locations, especially in colder weather months.

During a frigid snap earlier this year, The New York Times reviewed HeatTrio, a $900 space heater that also doubles as a bitcoin mining rig. Others use the heat from their own in-home cryptocurrency mining to spread warmth throughout their house.

“I’ve seen bitcoin rigs running quietly in attics, with the heat they generate rerouted through the home’s ventilation system to offset heating costs. It’s a clever use of what would otherwise be wasted energy,” said Jill Ford, CEO of Bitford Digital, a sustainable bitcoin mining company based in Dallas. “Using the heat is another example of how crypto miners can be energy allies if you apply some creativity to their potential,” Ford said.

It’s not necessarily going to save someone money on their electric bill — the economics will vary greatly from place to place and person to person, based on factors including local electricity rates and how fast a mining machine is — but the approach might make money to offset heating costs.

“Same price as heating the house, but the perk is that you are mining bitcoin,” Ford said.

A single mining machine — even an older model — is sufficient. Solo miners can join mining pools to share computing power and receive proportional payouts, making returns more predictable and changing the economic equation.  

“The concept of using crypto mining or GPU compute to heat homes is clever in theory because almost all the energy consumed by computation is released as heat,” said Andrew Sobko, founder of Argentum AI, which is creating a marketplace for the sharing of computing power. But he added that the concept makes the most sense in larger settings, particularly in colder climates or high-density buildings, such as data centers, where compute heat shows real promise as a form of industrial-scale heat recapture.

To make it work — it’s not like you can transport the heat somewhere by truck or train — you have to identity where the computing heat is needed and route it to that place, such as co-locating GPUs in environments from industrial parks to residential buildings.

“We’re working with partners who are already redirecting compute heat into building heating systems and even agricultural greenhouse warming. That’s where the economics and environmental benefits make real sense,” Sobko said. “Instead of trying to move the heat physically, you move the compute closer to where that heat provides value,” he added.

Why skeptics say crypto home heating won’t work

There are plenty of skeptics.

Derek Mohr, clinical associate professor at the University of Rochester Simon School of Business, does not think the future of home heating lies in crypto and says even industrial crypto is problematic.

Bitcoin mining is so specialized now that a home computer, or even network of home computers, would have almost zero chance of being helpful in mining a block of bitcoin, according to Mohr, with mining farms use of specialized chips that are created to mine bitcoin much faster than a home computer.

“While bitcoin mining at home — and in networks of home computers — was a thing that had small success 10 years ago, it no longer is,” Mohr said.

“The bitcoin heat devices I have seen appear to be simple space heaters that use your own electricity to heat the room … which is not an efficient way to heat a house,” he said. “Yes, bitcoin mining generates a lot of heat, but the only way to get that to your house is to use your own electricity,” Mohr said.

He added that while running your computer non-stop would generate heat, it has a very low probability of successfully mining a bitcoin block.

“In my opinion, this is not a real opportunity that will work. Instead it is taking advantage of things people have heard of — excess heat from bitcoin mining and profits from mining — and is giving false hope that there is a way for an individual to benefit from this,” Mohr said.

But some experts say more widespread use of plug-and-play, free-standing mining rigs, might make the concept viable in more locations over time. In the least, they say it is worth studying the dual use economic and environmental benefits based on the underlying fact that crypto mining generates significant heat as a byproduct of the computer processing.

“How can we capture the excess heat from the operation to power something else? That could range from heating a home to warming water, even in a swimming pool. As a result, your operating efficiency is higher on your power consumption,” said Nikki Morris, the executive director of the Texas Christian University Ralph Lowe Energy Institute.

She says the concept of crypto heating is still in its earliest stages, and most people don’t yet understand how it works or what the broader implications could be. “That’s part of what makes it so interesting. At Texas Christian University, we see opportunities to help people build both the vocabulary and the business use feasibility with industry partners,” Morris said.

Because crypto mining produces a digital asset that can be traded, it introduces a new source of revenue from power consumption, and the power source could be anything from the grid to natural gas to solar to wind or battery generation, according to Morris. She cited charging an electric vehicle at mixed-use buildings or apartment complexes as an example.

“Picture a similar scenario where an apartment complex’s crypto mining setup produces both digital currency and usable heat energy. That opens the door to distributed energy innovation to a broader stakeholder base, an approach that could complement existing heating systems and renewable generation strategies,” Morris said.

There are many questions to explore, including efficiency at different scales, integration with other energy sources, regulatory considerations, and overall environmental impact, “but as these technologies evolve, it’s worth viewing crypto heating not just as a curiosity, but as a small window into how digital and physical energy systems might increasingly converge in the future,” Morris said.

Testing bitcoin heat in the real world

The crypto-heated future may be unfolding in the town of Challis, Idaho, where Cade Peterson’s company, Softwarm, is repurposing bitcoin heat to ward off the winter.

Several shops and businesses in town are experimenting with Softwarm’s rigs to mine and heat. At TC Car, Truck and RV Wash, Peterson says, the owner was spending $25 a day to heat his wash bays to melt snow and warm up the water.

“Traditional heaters would consume energy with no returns. They installed bitcoin miners and it produces more money in bitcoin than it costs to run,” Peterson said. Meanwhile, an industrial concrete company is offsetting its $1,000 a month bill to heat its 2,500-gallon water tank by heating it with bitcoin.

Peterson has heated his own home for two-and-a-half years using bitcoin mining equipment and believes that heat will power almost everything in the future. “You will go to Home Depot in a few years and buy a water heater with a data port on it and your water will be heated with bitcoin,” Peterson said. 

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These underperforming groups may deliver AI-electric appeal. Here’s why.

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1 day ago

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November 15, 2025

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These underperforming groups may deliver AI-electric appeal. Here's why.

Reshoring and infrastructure products could be the next ETF play after AI, say ETF experts

Industrial and infrastructure stocks may soon share the spotlight with the artificial intelligence trade.

According to ETF Action’s Mike Atkins, there’s a bullish setup taking shape due to both policy and consumer trends. His prediction comes during a volatile month for Big Tech and AI stocks.

“You’re seeing kind of the old-school infrastructure, industrial products that have not done as well over the years,” the firm’s founding partner told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “But there’s a big drive… kind of away from globalization into this reshoring concept, and I think that has legs.”

Global X CEO Ryan O’Connor is also optimistic because the groups support the AI boom. His firm runs the Global X U.S. Infrastructure Development ETF (PAVE), which tracks companies involved in construction and industrial projects.

“Infrastructure is something that’s near and dear to our heart based off of PAVE, which is our largest ETF in the market,” said O’Connor in the same interview. “We think some of these reshoring efforts that you can get through some of these infrastructure places are an interesting one.”

The Global X’s infrastructure exchange-traded fund is up 16% so far this year, while the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH), which includes AI bellwethers Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor and Broadcom, is up 42%, as of Friday’s close.

Both ETFs are lower so far this month — but Global X’s infrastructure ETF is performing better. Its top holdings, according to the firm’s website, are Howmet Aerospace, Quanta Services and Parker Hannifin.

Supporting the AI boom

He also sees electrification as a positive driver.

“All of the things that are going to be required for us to continue to support this AI boom, the electrification of the U.S. economy, is certainly one of them,” he said, noting the firm’s U.S. Electrification ETF (ZAP) gives investors exposure to them. The ETF is up almost 24% so far this year.

The Global X U.S. Electrification ETF is also performing a few percentage points better than the VanEck Semiconductor ETF for the month.

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How tariffs and AI are giving secondhand platforms like ThredUp a boost

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2 days ago

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November 15, 2025

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How tariffs and AI are giving secondhand platforms like ThredUp a boost

At ThredUp‘s 600,000-square-foot warehouse in Suwanee, Georgia, roughly 40,000 pieces of used clothing are processed each day. The company’s logistics network — four facilities across the U.S. — now rivals that of some fast-fashion giants.

“This is the largest garment-on-hanger system in the world,” said Justin Pina, ThredUp’s senior director of operations. “We can hold more than 3.5 million items here.”

Secondhand shopping is booming. The global secondhand apparel market is expected to reach $367 billion by 2029, growing almost three times faster than the overall apparel market, according to GlobalData.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs were billed as a way to bring manufacturing back home. But the measures hit one of America’s most import-dependent industries: fashion.

About 97 percent of clothing sold in the U.S. is imported, mostly from China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association.

For years, Gen Z shoppers have been driving the rise of secondhand fashion, but now more Americans are catching on.

“When tariffs raise those costs, resale platforms suddenly look like the smart buy. This isn’t just a fad,” said Jasmine Enberg, co-CEO of Scalable. “Tariffs are accelerating trends that were already reshaping the way Americans shop.”

For James Reinhart, ThredUp’s CEO, the company is already seeing it play out.

“The business is free-cash-flow positive and growing double digits,” said Reinhart. “We feel really good about the economics, gross margins near 80% and operations built entirely within the U.S.”

ThredUp reported that revenue grew 34% year over year in the third quarter. The company also said it acquired more new customers in the quarter than at any other time in its history, with new buyer growth up 54% from the same period last year.

“If tariffs add 20% to 30% to retail prices, that’s a huge advantage for resale,” said Dylan Carden, research analyst at William Blair & Company. “Pre-owned items aren’t subject to those duties, so demand naturally shifts.”

Inside the ThredUp warehouse, where CNBC got a behind-the-scenes look. automation hums alongside human workers. AI systems photograph, categorize, and price thousands of garments per hour. For Reinhart, the technology is key to scaling resale like retail.

“AI has really accelerated adoption,” said Reinhart. “It’s helping us improve discovery, styling, and personalization for buyers.”

That tech wave extends beyond ThredUp. Fashion-tech startups Phia, co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, is using AI to scan thousands of listings across retail and resale in seconds.

“The fact that we’ve driven millions in transaction volume shows how big this need is,” Gates said. “People want smarter, cheaper ways to shop.”

ThredUp is betting that domestic infrastructure, automation, and AI will keep it ahead of the curve, and that tariffs meant to revive U.S. manufacturing could end up powering a new kind of American fashion economy.

“The future of fashion will be more sustainable than it is today,” said Reinhart. “And secondhand will be at the center of it.”

Watch the video to learn more.

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