Based on recent layoffs many had been wondering if this was the beginning of the end for Meta’s VR plans, but the company has reaffirmed that it’s still working on new tech in the space – including new hardware and a possible AI integration that’s truly sci-fi.

Speaking to investors following its latest quarterly earnings report, CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t talk too much about VR, perhaps unsurprisingly, instead focusing on smart glasses for which sales have “more than tripled” in the last year.

Initially not a great sign for VR’s future. However, Meta CFO Suan Li turned our hopes around when responding to a question from Deutsche Bank’s Benjamin Black on Reality Labs.

She said, “We continue to have optimism in the future of VR,” adding, “We are investing continually – going forward, rather, in building future headsets.” She said this before putting a slight damper on our VR hopes by explaining what we already knew, that “consumer adoption of VR has generally been on a slower growth path than wearables, and we are rebalancing our Reality Labs portfolio to reflect this. “

No more detail than that was revealed about these “future headsets”, but leaks have pointed to two possible devices that will land in 2026 and/or 2027.

One would be a ‘Quest 4’ that’s a large but more typical upgrade on its predecessor, and again come with a higher end and slightly lower end model like we saw with the Quest 3 and Quest 3S.