Chief Metaverse Officers Have Rebranded

Chief Metaverse Officers have mostly disappeared from companies’ executive ranks as the technology never lived up to the impossible hype of just a couple of years ago.

The Big Picture: The metaverse and VR are out, while AI and AR are in. It just goes to show how quickly the narrative can change from one emerging tech to another if there isn’t a return on investment.

Behind The Curtain: The Chief Metaverse Officer — the hottest exec role back in 2021/2022 — has gone the way of the dodo.

• Just how hot was the market? In 2022, executive search firm Russell Reynolds found that three-quarters of CEOs were looking for someone to lead their metaverse strategy.
• That led to brands like Gucci, Tiffany & Co., and Disney all hiring positions. And of course, Facebook literally changed its name to Meta to reflect its push into the space.
• While there was interest in the metaverse at the beginning, most people just didn’t care for the digital worlds — Meta’s Horizon World was laggy and The Sandbox would only have daily users in the double digits (Roblox and Fortnite are still kicking, though).
• And with the downturn went the metaverse chief — the role was either folded into an emerging tech umbrella, transformed into AI or AR leadership roles, or were scrapped altogether.

The Future: Why did the metaverse never take off? Blame the lack of adoption of VR headsets, the controversy surrounding NFTs, or the idea of an interconnected digital world that never happened. Whatever the reason, the industry probably won’t live up to McKinsey’s 2022 report that it would be worth $5 trillion by 2030. And with companies too focused on their next quarterly earnings report, they weren’t about to wait around to see if it would find its groove… not when generative AI disrupted the whole landscape at the end of 2022.

But considering how these hype-cycles work, expect some Chief AI Officers to get a sense of déjà vu soon.

Alternative Take: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is doubling down on the metaverse this decade… and he might be onto something.