Meta (i.e., Facebook) was hemorrhaging a lot of money on the VR side of things from the moment it embarked on that journey, all of US $80 billion. The company finally pulled the plug (well, not really, after all), announcing the discontinuation of Horizon Workrooms and halting commercial Quest sales. Just a day later, Meta said the they’ll keep the service available, but with limited support. Scaling back, if not shutting down was overdue, going by the abysmal user base of Horizon Worlds, especially when contrasted with the investment.
AR and VR, and various hybrids of the two under the umbrella term XR, were marketed as the flagbearers of Web 3.0 and the next leap in social networking and enterprise collaboration. Many were skeptical, and in hindsight, justifiably so. This latest move by Meta only reinforces the naysayers’ claims, but it would be wrong to let the big headlines mask the steady uptake of AR in enterprise workstreams that are not as newsworthy as, say, participating in an immersive collaborative virtual meeting as an avatar of yourself.
For CIOs and their businesses that come to them for counsel, the distinction between the failure of a flagship platform and the success that XR technology brings when deployed pragmatically, matters.
VR for collaboration was a no-go, but that is not a harbinger for all XR
Was it just bad timing? VR as an enterprise collaboration channel was marketed at a time when businesses and individuals were exploring practical means for in-person meetings to recharge the social capital on which fully virtual work depended during the pandemic. No one wanted more virtual collaboration at that time. When keeping your camera on in virtual meetings was seen as good meeting etiquette, so others could see the face behind the voice, the prospect of a cartoonish avatar of yourself, animated like a video game from the 1990s, did not sit well.
Then there are the issues of headsets: device management, physical discomfort, session setup, and cognitive load for what are often routine interactions. For most use cases, Teams or Zoom remained faster, more inclusive, and easier to adopt. The deeper issue was not technology maturity alone, it was positioning. VR asked users to change how they work.
AR, when applied correctly, does the opposite. It improves how work already happens.
Where AR Delivers
The strongest use cases are not in immersive experiences, but as operational interventions for well-defined gaps or issues, mostly behind the scenes.
Field service and remote expert support are where AR’s ROI becomes hardest to argue against. The value chain is direct: a technician encounters an unfamiliar problem, a remote expert sees the situation in real time through an AR-enabled device and guides resolution without a site visit. A European energy company, Moeve, reported a 20% reduction in maintenance activity time across plants and inspections after deploying an AR-based remote assistance solution.
In high-tech, asset-heavy industries spread across geographies, technical expertise is at a premium. AR enables fewer highly skilled experts to guide a larger pool of less-skilled technicians to fix issues remotely. Reduced downtime, faster repairs, and fewer site visits and associated travel costs create immediate, measurable financial impact.
Training is a visible area in which AR brings immediate and scalable opportunities. Capgemini’s global study of more than 700 organizations found that 82% of companies using AR/VR for training reported improved productivity or quality, with most at-scale adopters citing reduced training time and better safety metrics. Digging into industry specificity, PwC’s immersive technology research, published in 2025, notes that enterprise applications in manufacturing, design, and oversight are already mature, with the current phase focused on scaling and workflow integration.
Across industries, the ability to better train workers and specialists alike in routine as well as mission-critical complex tasks, at a fraction of the cost of conventional training at scale and without associated risks, is simply too compelling for businesses to ignore. Workers can repeat scenarios, receive real-time feedback, and build muscle memory without risking equipment or human safety in production. In healthcare, it enables surgeons to rehearse complex procedures. Apollo Hospitals and AIIMS are already using AR for surgical procedure simulation and physician training, effectively reducing reliance on cadavers and physical labs.
AR is also proving valuable in guided workflows and design validation. By overlaying digital models onto physical environments, teams can identify errors earlier, reduce rework, and improve coordination across locations.
The Opportunity for CIOs
As champions of transformation through technology, CIOs are best placed to advocate the judicious deployment of AR, like any other frontier technology, into workstreams where gaps exist to drive efficiencies or open new opportunities. Where businesses may be skeptical following Meta’s news of failed large-scale investments, it is for the CIO to distinguish between VR as a platform bet and AR as a sharply focused strategic solution.
Organizations that move at the right time accumulate not only cost efficiencies but also business-specific learnings, setting themselves up for compounding gains as the technology evolves alongside.
Start with a small number of high-impact workstreams where real-world use cases already exist, for example, training and onboarding, field service and maintenance, or safety and compliance simulations.
Define success in operational terms, as one would with other technologies. It is important to drive home the fact that AR is not experimental or hype-driven, but a well-researched solution to real problems. Run time-bound pilots with clear metrics. With data on training time, error resolution time, repeat error rates, downtime, travel costs, and more made visible, decision-making becomes data-driven, moving away from news-based perception. This clarity accelerates both buy-in and execution.
