What does it mean when a company “burns through money”? Where does the money go?

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I read [this article](https://kotaku.com/facebook-metaverse-vr-2022-billions-13-billion-quest-2-1850062517) this morning about how ~~Facebook~~ Meta’s VR division “Lost $13.72 Billion In 2022”. The article later says that Meta is burning through money. But if they’re spending money to generate a product, doesn’t that money go somewhere? If Meta doesn’t have the $14 billion, who does?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

“burn through money” is a way of saying they’re spending money that isn’t yet generating enough revenue to cover the spend. Like maybe they spent $15B but only generated $1B in sales from the division, resulting in a $14B loss.

The money goes to salaries and benefits of the employees working on the VR product, the costs to provide offices, computers/equipment, software, lunches/snacks, etc. to workers; advertising/marketing budgets; any sort of IP they need to license or acquire; cost to file patents on their IP; the cost to build prototypes; the cost to re-tool factories to build VR headsets; perhaps write-downs if they have unsold obsolete products, etc.

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