$80 billion down the drain – and we called it.

How much money would you have to lose before it hurts?

For Mark Zuckerberg, apparently, the answer is $80 billion. Meta has officially shut down its Metaverse division – the project they believed in so deeply that they renamed the entire company after it.

Five years ago, the hype was deafening. McKinsey was cheerleading. HSBC was buying virtual bank branches. And in April 2022, our team said: This isn’t going to work.

We’re not usually the “I told you so” types. But this week, we replayed our original episode from April 7, 2022 – and it holds up remarkably well. Graeme made the case then that the Metaverse, as it was being sold to us, was a failure of imagination. Why would anyone recreate the worst parts of offices, banks, and retail stores in virtual reality? If you could be anything, why would you choose to push a virtual trolley through a virtual supermarket?

The point was never that VR and AR have no future. They do – in gaming, medicine, engineering, and entertainment. The point was that the corporate Metaverse was hype dressed up as strategy. And leaders who bought in without thinking critically got burned.

This matters right now because the same pattern is playing out with AI. The hype cycle is loud, the promises are big, and the pressure to “get on board” is intense. Some of it is real. Some of it isn’t. And your job as a leader is to know the difference.

Watch the video and see for yourself – Graeme’s original 2022 analysis alongside this week’s update.

If you want our team to help yours separate signal from noise – on AI, on the future of work, on where your industry is actually heading – let’s have a conversation. Reach out to us at TomorrowToday Global, and we’ll set something up.

What hype are you being asked to buy into right now?

 

Graeme Codrington is an internationally recognised futurist, keynote speaker and researcher specialising in the future of work, leadership and disruption. As co-founder and lead futurist at TomorrowToday Global, he helps leaders make sense of what’s ahead, spot emerging opportunities early, and build the clarity and confidence to stay relevant in a fast-changing world.

Graeme speaks to 100,000+ people a year in 150+ countries and is a 2× TEDx speaker and best-selling author. He’s also ranked #17 in the Global Gurus “Top 30 Futurist Professionals” for 2026.

Chat to us about booking Graeme to help you unlearn, re-think and re-imagine your strategy and upgrade your thinking to identify the emerging opportunities in your industry.

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