Investing in Canadian Talent to Help Build for the Metaverse 

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO introduced Meta in 2021. The company aims to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect through a hybrid of today’s online social experiences. These will sometimes be expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together — and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world. The Metaverse will use 3D spaces to let you socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what we can imagine with technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality and smart glasses. It will essentially build immersive online social experiences.  

The Creation of an Engineering Hub in Toronto 

In March 2022, Meta announced the creation of a new engineering hub based in Toronto. This hub is expected to create up to 2,500 new jobs over the next several years. The majority of the roles are engineering-focused and expected to span across building extended reality experiences and Meta technologies. Meta is also establishing the first Canadian WhatsApp, Messenger and Remote Presence engineering teams and growing their Canadian Reality Labs and AI Research teams. 

Diverse Work Opportunities  

Based in one of the most multicultural cities in the world, Toronto, the company aims to build the metaverse with diversity, equity and inclusion from its inception, meaning that international graduates will be highly valuable to the company. These will be highly-skilled jobs and will offer a blend of in-office and remote work options, creating economic opportunities for Canadian talent. Along with this, Meta announced an additional $510,000 in unrestricted grants to 17 Canadian research labs working on research that will advance innovations in the metaverse.