Tech Giants' Epic Battle: Is the Metaverse Being Conquered by Web2?

Nowadays, the metaverse has become the most money-making banner in the capital market. Since last year, when the market value of Roblox, the "first metaverse stock," surged from $4 billion to $60 billion, creating a new financing myth, internet giants have followed suit one after another, increasing their investments in this field. After months of布局, the competitive landscape has begun to take shape.

First, Facebook rebranded to Meta in October last year, officially announcing "all in" metaverse , and recently poached large numbers of talent from Microsoft, Google, Apple and other giants. The war for talent and money has begun. Major companies are unwilling to be outdone, leveraging their unique advantages in their respective fields. Apple focuses on augmented reality, while Microsoft's metaverse is closely tied to business and office scenarios. Google is currently integrating its SaaS product portfolio into a cohesive enterprise software, becoming an enterprise platform that competes with Microsoft's integrated products.

Domestically, Tencent, ByteDance, Baidu, NetEase, Alibaba, miHoYo and other internet giants are all laying out upstream and downstream industries related to the metaverse through investment or self-developed methods, racing to register "metaverse " trademarks.

It can be said that in the next few years, an "epic battle" among tech giants in the metaverse direction is almost a certainty.

However, is the metaverse envisioned by these well-capitalized, ambitious Web2 giants the true metaverse? If the metaverse means a paradigm shift from Web2 to Web3, will these Web2 giants lead this revolution?

Internet Giants Race to the Metaverse

At the 2022 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which closed on January 8, the metaverse became the undisputed protagonist. Sony, Panasonic, Microsoft, NVIDIA and other major manufacturers announced their latest progress in metaverse exploration. In terms of financing, data from Chainxin shows that in the past three months, there have been 49 publicly disclosed metaverse financing events globally, with total financing exceeding $950 million. At the same time, the giants' battle for metaverse talent is also in full swing. According to data from recruitment website Indeed last December, salaries for metaverse-related positions have increased 10-fold. Why are internet giants racing to the metaverse?

In the current market environment, capital's hunger for growth is very strong. From a macroeconomic perspective, as the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing policy continues, there is excess liquidity in the capital market, while internal involution competition within the internet industry intensifies, and innovation has shown signs of fatigue. Therefore, capital has to look further afield to find new quality targets.

The metaverse, inherently related to technologies like VR, AR, IoT, and blockchain that the industry has continuously focused on and developed in recent years, also possesses a natural sense of futurism and storytelling, making it undoubtedly one of the best choices. The Web3 core of the metaverse also reflects capital's expectations for internet iteration.

Once, the Web1 era gave birth to Microsoft, Google, Baidu, NetEase, etc., while the Web2 era gave birth to Facebook, ByteDance, Meituan, Didi, etc. So, in the future metaverse and Web3 ecosystem, will there be another deep iteration of business logic and business structure? Will it disrupt the current competitive landscape, give birth to new industry leaders, and take cake away from existing giants?

Facing an uncertain future, giants have to launch defenses and plan surprise attacks.

Big Ships Are Hard to Turn: Giants' Conservative Innovation

Under the hype, how specifically do giants participate in the metaverse?

Currently, the metaverse is most discussed and hyped in the gaming field. Take Tencent, which has deeply cultivated the gaming industry for many years, as an example. It is relatively familiar with the construction of virtual worlds in terms of technology, and has deep understanding of scene building and localization; meanwhile, it also has advantages in cloud computing.

But if we look at both sides, we find that under such inertia, Tencent seems to understand the metaverse as a theme park covering enough types of "game facilities," and attempts to seize opportunities in the metaverse field through "buying, buying, buying."

Tencent started laying out metaverse games very early. In 2012, Tencent became a major shareholder of Epic Games (a company focused on 3D content and AR/VR content development, a representative company in the metaverse field), holding 40%. In February 2020, Tencent also participated in Roblox's Series G financing (the "first metaverse stock" online creation game platform) and obtained the exclusive slot for China agency. In addition, Tencent has invested in almost all companies involved in the metaverse, including VR game company WeMo Studio, digital animation production company Hunqi Network, etc.

"This is both the game empire's buying spree, and buying for metaverse infrastructure." Tencent's metaverse construction has never separated from its original business logic. When the old model is too strong, it hinders innovation. In another example, Microsoft is the same. Starting with Windows, Microsoft has established huge advantages in operating systems, and now under the metaverse hype, it has chosen to integrate Microsoft's mixed reality platform Mesh into the cloud operating system Teams.

In reality, most giants cannot "burn their bridges" like Meta (of course, whether Meta's level of innovation is adequate remains to be seen, as will be discussed in the next section), but only continue their past logic under the metaverse context, maintaining existing advantages. The metaverse seems to only be discussed as a new "media environment," as a "channel" and "frontend." This is also reflected in many metaverse reports recently published domestically - a large part of these reports were written by journalism and communication schools of universities. Such conservatism is not friendly to the development of new things.

As mentioned earlier, the metaverse is closely related to Web3. This will be a deep iteration of business logic and business structure, and beneficiaries of the old order all need disruptive self-revolution. Because the metaverse is contrary to the rules and constraints of Web2.

The metaverse is continuous and persistent. It will jump out of specific scenarios like games and office work to become life itself. It can be a diverse ecosystem, but users should be able to explore freely within it and feel a consistent and harmonious online experience. This also requires the metaverse to achieve portability and interoperability of assets and content between systems, break down barriers, share assets and data between various protocols and networks, and can persist forever.

Therefore, the interconnectivity at the underlying logic of the metaverse may require abandoning some core assets of the mobile internet era from the beginning, such as traffic and data, which are exactly the moats of giants.

Any Metaverse Company Must Also Be a Blockchain Technology Company

For Web2 companies to truly enter the metaverse, they need to open their ecosystems and eliminate their competitive moats. For traditional internet giants, this is deeply painful - big ships are hard to turn.

So giants focus more on specific issues like virtual reality and cloud computing, planning to build "competitive parallel walled gardens focused on online VR experiences." With the giants' strong financial strength and years of technical accumulation, these explorations certainly have a practical side. But giants cannot touch core issues at another level: how to establish rights to digital assets in the metaverse? How to circulate the economic system?

With the lesson of Libra (a crypto stablecoin project initiated by Facebook), people have already seen sovereign nations' vigilance against tokens issued by giants, and dare not cross the line.

This is exactly the natural advantage of blockchain-native projects and DAOs, and these young competitors are more flexible in their maneuvers.

Blockchain and the metaverse are a natural match. Blockchain is the infrastructure of the metaverse. Any metaverse company must also be a blockchain technology company. This point was fully discussed in two articles last year: "Metaverse Explosion (Part 1): Will It Be the Biggest Opportunity in the Crypto Market?" and "Metaverse Explosion (Part 2): What Opportunities Will It Bring to Investors?" .

Brendan Forster, co-founder of decentralized lending platform Dharma, once tweeted, "This is Ethereum vs Facebook. Open vs. closed; transparent vs. opaque; permissionless vs. permissioned; community-owned vs. Zuckerberg-owned. I've placed my bet. Let's build a bright future together."

We have every reason to believe that the future of the metaverse will be the future of crypto.

Disclaimer

This article may contain product-related content not applicable to your region. This article is intended to provide general information only and does not accept responsibility for any factual errors or omissions herein. This article represents only the author's personal views and does not represent OKX 's views. This article is not intended to provide any advice, including but not limited to: (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to buy, sell or hold digital assets; or (iii) financial, accounting, legal or tax advice. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins) involves high risk, may fluctuate significantly, and may even become worthless. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation. For questions about your specific situation, please consult your legal/tax/investment professional. The information appearing in this article (including market data and statistics, if any) is for general reference only. Although we have taken all reasonable precautions in preparing these data and charts, we accept no responsibility for any factual errors or omissions expressed herein. © 2025 OKX. This article may be reproduced or distributed in full, or excerpts of 100 words or less from this article may be used, provided such use is non-commercial. Any reproduction or distribution of the entire article must also prominently state: "© 2025 OKX, used with permission." Permitted excerpts must cite the article name and include the source, such as "Article Name, [Author Name (if applicable)], © 2025 OKX". Some content may be generated or assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Derivative works or other uses of this article are not permitted.

Show More

Recommended Reading

2025 KOLs' Most Used OKX Products List

In the cryptocurrency industry, professional players' choices are always direct and pure. In 2025, KOLs used a full year of fund investment and time accumulation to cast the most genuine vote for industry tools and ecosystem development. We centered around four core questions—"What was the biggest achievement this year?", "Given the achievements, what OKX products did you use most and like most in 2025?", "Why do you like it?", "This

January 5, 2026

2026 Investment Outlook: Assets On-Chain, Intelligence and Privacy | OKX Annual Record

Three major trends of crypto's future: asset transformation, entity transformation and rule transformation. As we are about to enter 2026, saying goodbye to the past four years of infrastructure construction focused on "building roads," the crypto industry is welcoming a profound paradigm shift. OKX Ventures defines this as the opening of the "Kinetic Finance" era, where the core is no longer how fast the network is, but the flow and earning of on-chain assets

December 31, 2025

Voting with Data: Insights into 2025 Hot Trading Products | OKX Annual Record

If you only look at market trends, it's hard to explain the difference in returns among trading users in 2025. What truly determines returns also depends on account-level operation methods, not just market volatility itself. OKX's annual statement shows that mainstream coins are still the core of fund turnover and returns bearing, supporting trading and strategy execution; emerging coins are more used to amplify volatility and provide phased opportunities, but are not a stable, long-term source of returns. What truly continuously contributes returns is

December 30, 2025

Fusaka in Practice: What Does Ethereum's Latest Upgrade Mean for L2, Nodes, and Users?

The Ethereum mainnet has completed the Fusaka fork. From the protocol level, this upgrade mainly includes four parts. The full text shows more of the three guests' core views and frontline experience in Q&A format: Ahmad (@smartprogrammer) – Nethermind execution client / Ethereum core developer Manu (@manunalepa) – Prysm / Of

December 16, 2025

OKX Research | Why Did RWA Become a Key Narrative in 2025?

RWA (Real World Assets) is becoming the "new favorite" of global capital. Simply put, RWA means moving valuable, ownership-bearing things from the real world—such as traditional financial assets like houses, bonds, stocks, and even assets like artworks, private lending, and carbon credits that are usually not easily traded—onto the blockchain to become tradeable, programmable crypto assets. This way, not

November 20, 2025

Claude Takes the Championship: The Truth Behind 6 Major AI Grid Strategy Showdowns | OKX & Ai Coin Live Trading Test

Short-term trading champion —is it also a king in grid strategies? The first season of the "AI Trading Live Arena" launched by NOF1 finally concluded at 6 AM on November 4, 2025, whetting the appetite of the crypto, tech and finance circles. But the ending of this "AI IQ public test" was somewhat unexpected—six models' total principal of $60,000 was only $4.3 left at the conclusion

November 6, 2025