Reality Labs, the virtual and augmented reality arm of Meta, has recorded losses of over $7.7 billion across the first six months of the year.

The figures compare to a previous loss of $5.7 billion during the same period of 2022.

Meta said that it expects operating losses for Reality Labs to "increase meaningfully" year-over-year in 2023, blaming this on the company's ongoing product development efforts in AR and VR, as well as investments to "further scale its ecosystem".

While Meta's total revenue in the second quarter jumped by 11 per cent, the company said it anticipates full-year expenses to be in the increased range of $88 billion to $91 billion due to "legal-related costs".

In May, the social media giant was hit with a record €1.2 billion EU privacy fine over the transfer of EU user data to its US servers.

Meta was issued with a fine on Wednesday for similar reasons by the Federal Court of Australia, which ordered the company to pay $14 million for unauthorised user data collection.

There were also hints in the company's latest accounts that its job cutting pursuits may not be over yet, with the social media giant explaining that it is "continuing to assess facilities consolidation and data centre restructuring initiatives".

The results come after Meta laid off around 11,000 workers last November, with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg saying at the time that the company would become a "leaner org" able to "execute its highest priorities fastest".

Earlier this year the business announced further job cuts, with a total of 21,000 staff being let go in less than a year.

"We had a good quarter," said Zuckerberg. "We continue to see strong engagement across our apps and we have the most exciting roadmap I've seen in a while with Llama 2, Threads, Reels, new AI products in the pipeline, and the launch of Quest 3 this fall."

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