In 2023, Meta fought an eight-month antitrust battle with the Federal Trade Commission for the right to acquire Within, the studio behind the VR fitness app Supernatural. The deal was reportedly worth around $400 million. Mark Zuckerberg even testified in court to get it done.

Less than three years later, Meta is handing it back. The company announced on 3 June that Supernatural will spin off into a new independent company called Supernatural Health, led by the app’s original founders. A new version of the app will launch this autumn on the Meta Quest platform, while Meta’s own version will be sunsetted on 3 December.

It is the rare big tech acquisition story that ends with the product surviving, even if the route it took to get here was absurd.

From courtroom victory to content freeze

The FTC sued to block Meta’s purchase of Within in July 2022, arguing the deal would be anti-competitive in the nascent VR fitness market. A federal judge disagreed, and Meta closed the acquisition in February 2023.

Supernatural thrived inside Meta for a time, offering beat-matching boxing and bat-swinging workouts set against sweeping virtual landscapes. It built a devoted community, particularly among older adults and people with mobility challenges who found in VR a form of exercise that felt more like play than punishment.

Then, in January 2026, Meta slashed roughly 1,500 jobs across Reality Labs, about 10% of the division’s workforce. Three VR game studios, Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru Games, and Armature Studio, were shuttered. Supernatural was placed into maintenance mode, with no new workouts, no new songs, no new features, and the coaches were let go.

The cuts were part of a broader pivot away from VR and toward AI-powered wearables. By May, Meta had cut a further 8,000 positions companywide, redirecting billions into AI infrastructure. Reality Labs, which has posted cumulative operating losses of approximately $90 billion since its creation, was no longer the centre of Zuckerberg’s ambitions.

The community pushed back

Supernatural’s users did not go quietly. A Change.org petition called on Meta either to keep investing in the app or to let the team spin it off as an independent operation funded by subscriptions. Members of the app’s Facebook community groups shared stories of weight loss, chronic pain management, and mental health improvements they attributed to the platform.

“We all felt like it was purchased to kill,” one user wrote in the public Supernatural Facebook group after the spinoff was announced. “I am such a sap. Why am I tearing up?”

The pattern is familiar. Big tech companies routinely acquire products, strip them for parts or neglect them, and eventually shut them down, a cycle so well documented that entire websites exist to catalogue the dead. What makes Supernatural unusual is that Meta chose to let it walk away rather than simply pulling the plug.

What changes under Supernatural Health

The new company says it will bring back the original coaches and maintain the app’s core identity. “Same coaches, same DNA, same obsession with making fitness feel like the best part of your day,” Supernatural Health states on its website.

Prices, however, are going up. The annual subscription will rise from $100 to $180, and the monthly plan from $10 to $20, according to Engadget. Whether the increase reflects the true cost of running the service without Meta’s infrastructure, or the premium of independence, remains to be seen.

It is also unclear whether Supernatural Health will be able to expand beyond the Meta Quest platform, or what kind of content cadence the smaller team can sustain. The existing library of more than 3,000 workouts will carry over, but the real test is whether an indie studio can keep pace with the music licensing and production demands that a $400 million Meta acquisition once funded.

An expensive lesson in acquisition logic

The whole episode is a case study in how big tech acquisitions can go wrong, not because the product fails, but because the acquirer’s priorities shift. Meta recently had to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of AI startup Manus after Chinese regulators blocked the deal, writing off the entire position. The GIPHY acquisition ended similarly, with UK regulators ordering a forced sale.

Supernatural is a gentler version of the same story. Meta fought for it, won, and then decided it no longer wanted what it had bought.

For the users who built their daily routines around the app, the corporate logic is beside the point. They have their workout back, even if it costs nearly twice as much. Whether Supernatural Health can thrive as a small independent company in a VR market that its former owner is actively retreating from is a question that will take more than one product launch to answer.