Syed Imran Haider 
According to reports, Microsoft Corp. is shuttering one of its most prominent groups, which was dedicated to the promotion and development of the industrial metaverse.
The reports said that the software giant had made the decision of closing down its entire Industrial Metaverse Core group, which had a strength of 100 workers.
This was part of the company’s layoff announced in January, which saw 10,000 people laid off from their jobs.
The shutdown
It appears that the Washington-based firm has decided to abandon its Metaverse ambitions in favor of other initiatives.
Reports said that Microsoft had made an internal announcement about disbanding the Industrial Metaverse Core division.
As the name indicates, the aim of the division was to bring about the metaverse integration in industries.
It was just 4 months back that the software giant had put together the group and it was focusing on implementing the metaverse interfaces for controlling transportation networks, industrial robotics and electrical power plants.
In order to integrate the metaverse in the industrial environment, the group focused on developing software that could help in accomplishing this goal.
But, the company decided to lay off the 100 workers that it had hired for this particular group.
The reassurances
However, Microsoft was also quick to add that it did not have any intention of disbanding the products that the group had already developed and that it would continue supporting them.
The company stated that they had just shifted their focus towards the areas of the industrial metaverse that are the most important for its clients and they would not have to worry about support.
It said that more details would be provided in the future. In January, Microsoft had announced that it was restructuring its business, which would see 10,000 people lose their jobs.
AI
The recent events show that Microsoft is only shifting its resources from the metaverse to initiatives, such as artificial intelligence (AI), which are garnering a lot of hype these days.
There had been reports earlier, which indicated that the layoffs had also affected other metaverse projects of the company.
These included people working on the Mixed Reality Tool Kit and those part of the metaverse platform Altspacer.
Since January, Microsoft has been making investments in AI-related initiatives. The company announced on January 23rd that it had made multibillion dollar investment in OpenAI.
The company has become quite popular these days due to its chatbot, ChatGPT. Microsoft also announced that it was incorporating the chatbot in its Bing search engine, along with its web browser, Edge.
This move comes as Microsoft is aiming to break the dominance that Google has enjoyed in the search world for a long time.
It has also prompted other companies, including Google, make hefty investments in startups dealing with artificial intelligence (AI), with Alphabet also announcing a chatbot named Bard.
The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella said that every software category would change due to AI and search is the largest of them all.
