Meta’s CTO has responded to the negative discourse around his leaked “2025: The Year of Greatness” memo.

In the viral memo from November which leaked last month, Andrew Bosworth told the staff of Meta Reality Labs, the company’s hardware and metaverse division, that 2025 will determine whether it’s “the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure”.

But one line in the memo sparked particular concern from the XR community, wherein Bosworth declared that “Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance”. For some, this was interpreted as a sign that Meta might ditch its Quest headset efforts if Horizon Worlds on smartphones isn’t a major success.

Now, a month after the memo leaked, Andrew Bosworth has responded to these concerns in an answer to a question during his latest Instagram “ask-me-anything” session.

“Social connection has always been the core of what we do, and owning the social substrate of whatever the next platform is, that’s always going to be important,” Bosworth explains.

“So I think we probably never give up. Never, never, never give up!”

“One of the problems with reading these kinds of internal documents is that you don’t always get the full context,” he continues. “The context around it collapses.”

Internal all-hands memos are often rallying cries to staff, akin to a general riling up an army before a battle, rather than literal expressions of a company’s exact position, and Bosworth seems to be suggesting that his memo is no different.

“For us, the real context of that memo is that this is an exciting year. It really feels like a lot of things are breaking our way.”

“Is this a make-or-break year? Well, sometimes they all are.”