Inside Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg’s falling out over the metaverse: ‘She was simply performed’

Mark Zuckerberg’s longtime lieutenant Sheryl Sandberg “was just done” with the Meta boss after he made the choice to pivot the corporate away from its bread-and-butter social media-based enterprise and towards the metaverse, in response to a report.

Sandberg, the “Lean In” writer and former Google government, served as Zuckerberg’s No. 2 at Fb dad or mum firm Meta for 14 years before stepping down last year.

Whereas she nonetheless serves on the corporate’s board of administrators, Sandberg reportedly grew disillusioned with Zuckerberg’s shift towards the metaverse — the immersive, online-based digital world that’s accessible by way of digital actuality and augmented actuality headsets.

“She needed no a part of the metaverse,” a source told Insider when discussing the breakdown of the Sandberg-Zuckerberg partnership.

“She was simply performed.”

Zuckerberg poured billions of {dollars} into pushing the corporate into the metaverse — angering shareholders who couldn’t determine the rationale for the expenditure at a time when the corporate inventory was tanking.

Actuality Labs, the division of Meta that develops VR and AR know-how, lately reported an working lack of $3.7 billion.

Final 12 months, Actuality Labs misplaced a complete of $13.7 billion although it generated $2.16 billion in income — most of which was on account of gross sales of its Quest VR headsets.

Because the begin of final 12 months, Actuality Labs has misplaced $21.3 billion.

Nonetheless, Meta has seen its inventory value largely get well because of Zuckerberg’s “12 months of effectivity,” which has been marked by layoffs and restructuring.

Within the final 12 months, Meta’s inventory value has risen by greater than 156%. It closed down 2.1% at $318.60 on Monday.

The connection between Sandberg and Zuckerberg turned frayed in recent times partly because of the bodily distance between them that grew in the course of the COVID pandemic, in response to Insider.

Earlier than the pandemic, Zuckerberg and Sandberg would meet frequently each Friday on the firm’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.

When COVID hit, some Meta workers stayed at Zuckerberg’s property in Hawaii, however Sandberg wasn’t one in every of them, in response to Insider.

Sandberg and different longtime executives departed at across the similar time, together with Mike Schroepfer, the chief know-how officer, and Marne Levine, who was chief enterprise officer.

Zuckerberg ended up changing these executives with individuals who didn’t have the identical cachet — enabling the CEO to consolidate energy and shrink his interior circle to a small, trusted group of advisers, Insider reported.

Zuckerberg, whom Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists because the seventh-richest individual on the earth with a web price of $118 billion as of Monday, has been elevating his public profile in latest months.

He turned father to a 3rd youngster, won a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament, and posed shirtless while sporting rock-hard abs subsequent to combined martial arts trainers in anticipation of a possible cage match with tech rival Elon Musk.

Over the weekend, the doting dad of three young girls was noticed on the Taylor Swift live performance in Santa Clara, Calif.