I’m Calling It: The Metaverse Is Over

January 16, 2026

20 min episode · 2 min read

Episode

20 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Crypto & Web3

AI-Generated Summary

Published Jan 17, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓AI Industry Talent Wars: Thinking Machines loses multiple cofounders to OpenAI and Meta after struggling to raise funding at $50 billion valuation despite only offering Tinker API, not training foundation models, revealing product strategy gaps.
✓Content Creator Monetization: Cloudflare acquires Human Native to build payment systems where AI developers compensate creators for training data, launching AI Crawl Control to help content owners restrict or monetize bot access to their websites.
✓Apple Manufacturing Dependence: Apple's annual TSMC spending grew twelve times from $2 billion in 2014 to $24 billion in 2025, creating codependence where switching foundries would cost $2-5 billion and risk two to three years of inferior products.
✓Vibe Coding Market Expansion: Replit enables natural language mobile app creation with integrated Stripe monetization, approaching $9 billion valuation as AI coding startups like Cursor reach $29 billion valuation, threatening traditional software stocks down 11 percent.

What It Covers

Meta shuts down VR business products including Workrooms and commercial Quest sales while laying off Reality Labs staff, signaling Zuckerberg's pivot away from VR toward mobile and smart glasses as metaverse strategy collapses.

Key Questions Answered

•AI Industry Talent Wars: Thinking Machines loses multiple cofounders to OpenAI and Meta after struggling to raise funding at $50 billion valuation despite only offering Tinker API, not training foundation models, revealing product strategy gaps.
•Content Creator Monetization: Cloudflare acquires Human Native to build payment systems where AI developers compensate creators for training data, launching AI Crawl Control to help content owners restrict or monetize bot access to their websites.
•Apple Manufacturing Dependence: Apple's annual TSMC spending grew twelve times from $2 billion in 2014 to $24 billion in 2025, creating codependence where switching foundries would cost $2-5 billion and risk two to three years of inferior products.
•Vibe Coding Market Expansion: Replit enables natural language mobile app creation with integrated Stripe monetization, approaching $9 billion valuation as AI coding startups like Cursor reach $29 billion valuation, threatening traditional software stocks down 11 percent.

Notable Moment

Meta recommends users switch to Arthur, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom Workplace as Workrooms replacement, effectively endorsing competitors while abandoning its own VR collaboration platform that Zuckerberg personally introduced before the company rebrand.

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