Might as well - the predicted downfall of ENGAGE XR
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| Photo by Megan Lee on Unsplash |
Given that it looks like EDUMetaverse is headed to the turf, I might as well get a blog post up prognosticating that ENGAGE XR is going down too. I might as well. I'm not even early to these thoughts; I heard through the grapevine that ENGAGE XR was laying off folks within the past 12 months. I did research that and it is true.
LinkedIn shows negative 41% employee growth in the past 12 months.
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| Negative 41% employee growth. |
The Irish Times reported a stock slippage of 8% on January 6, 2025 due to contracts with Middle Eastern partners that had not come through or realized yet.
By June 2025, there seemed to be further delays and possibly more loss, although this article from Sharecast from 6 months later seems to have the same figures as the January article. So it is unclear to me if this is more of a tumble or a new tumble. With the dramatically increasing interest in AI during this time, it would not surprise me at all if the investors were looking elsewhere for returns.
I had heard "layoffs" but didn't know of anyone specifically. It appears that Glassdoor did. 😕
To be clear, I'm not kicking a man when he is down here. I've had a beef with ENGAGE XR for years due to their false learning claims using virtual reality. I've written before about their contract with Meta and Stanford University. I've written about their "metaversity" concept. I've written about their strange use cases and the evidence that they use to push their snake oil use of VR for learning.
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| Not aging well? Morehouse College, ENGAGE XR, and the Metaversity |
So this is a case of the chickens coming home to roost. One can crow on one wants to about how great one's XR is, but if one is propping up untruths, failure will follow.
BTW, in the same bucket with ENGAGE XR is VictoryXR. I might write this out more later. For sure, with the early evidence of what AI is doing to education (impact on learning), it's going to get ugly.
Note: be aware that there is more than one company with the name "Engage" in the virtual reality space.