Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company's metaverse bet is 'not the majority of what we're doing,' as he faces growing backlash for the costly venture. 

"About 80% of our investments – a little more – go towards the core business, what we call our family of apps, so that's Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Messenger, and the ads business associated with that. Then a little less than 20% of our investment goes towards Reality Labs," Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the New York Times Dealbook conference. 

"So still the vast majority of what we're doing is, and will continue to be, going towards social media for quite some time until the metaverse becomes a larger thing." 

Since last year, when Zuckerberg announced a surprise rebrand from Facebook to Meta, the company has sunk a significant amount of money into metaverse technology, reporting nearly $20 billion in losses from its metaverse "Reality Labs" segment since the start of last year. 

The losses keep piling up with no end in sight; some investors have expressed concern that Zuckerberg has lost focus on his company's core social media business in exchange for a long-shot project that may take years to reap financial rewards. 

"You can debate whether 20% is too much for this bet, but it's not the majority of what we're doing," Zuckerberg said. 

He broke down Reality Labs' spending, saying 40% goes toward VR investments, and about half goes toward building the longer-term project: "normal-looking glasses that can put holograms in the world."

Despite the resistance to his company's pivot, Zuckerberg sounded upbeat about his company's multi-billion-dollar investment in the metaverse. 

"We're not going to be here in the 2030s communicating and using computing devices that are exactly the same as what we have today. If someone has to build that and invest in it and believe in it, there's a lot of new technology that needs to get invented to create that. So I'm still very optimistic about that," he said.