- The demand for virtual world platforms has been now concealed by Artificial intelligence as it is the latest technology.
- In March 2022, looking forward to the firm’s metaverse ambitions, Alibaba directed a $60 million funding round in Nreal.
- The multiverse division of Alibaba has earned millions of yuan in investments and some hundreds of employees were employed in this sector
Alibaba, a Chinese multinational e-commerce company is cutting down its metaverse operations, similar to other tech titans that have so far cut down resources from this sector.
A Hong Kong-based English newspaper, South China Morning Post has reported that a lot of employees from the metaverse sector of this company have been laid off as a part of restructuring the company and enhancing the efficiency of the same.
The metaverse unit of Alibaba often referred to as Yuanjing was introduced in 2021 and it operates from both Shanghai and Hangzhou, at a time when the demand for virtual world platforms was at its peak than ever before.
AI overpowers metaverse
The demand for virtual world platforms has been now concealed by Artificial intelligence as it is the latest technology and also it requires increased resources as well as investment from firms as compared to other technologies.
The report from the mentioned media outlet further added that the multiverse division has earned millions of yuan in investments and some hundreds of employees were employed in this sector. Also, it will not wipe out its existence and will continue to offer applications, tooling, and other services.
In March 2022, looking forward to the firm’s metaverse ambitions, Alibaba directed a $60 million funding round in Nreal, a Chinese company that specializes in augmented reality technology.
Many tech giants from China such as Tencent, ByteDance as well as Baidu are also planning to capitalize on the possibilities of the metaverse sector in a trademark frenzy at the time. The cutting down which has been done recently shows a wider industry trend when the tech giants are planning to shift their operations from metaverse to AI development.
There are many who are not at all in favour of this shift. The head of metaverse operations at Baidu, a multinational company specializing in internet services and AI has left the firm following the plans of the company revolving around generative AI development.
Other companies seizing metaverse operations
Apart from this, in October last year, Meta also fired its employees from the Reality Labs units. This unit is responsible for building augmented as well as virtual reality technologies for the metaverse, as reported by Reuters.
Adding more to this, Reality Labs has also faced a loss of about $4.4 billion in Q3 and a total loss of more than $58 billion in operations since 2020. Last year in February, Microsoft also ceased its Industrial Metaverse core team and fired over 100 employees who were already working on this project.
At the same time, a month later, Disney also witnessed ceasing its metaverse operations while firing employees under the name of a broader restructuring.
