"We continue to anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year," Meta said. Again, it doesn't specify numbers, but Reality Labs (the division that houses the metaverse operation) accounted for $285 million in revenues in Q3, just 1% of the company's total for that period. The company's continuing ambition to grow metaverse and other new lines of business have been a big pull on Facebook's balance sheet. For context, in 2020, the company sunk $15.72 billion into capex, a figure that ticked up in 2021 to $19.24 billion. In 2022, capex looks to be even more outsized against a stark backdrop of sluggish revenue due to declining returns on its core advertising business: Meta estimated in Q3 that 2022 capex would be in the range of $32 billion and $33 billion.