Mark Zuckerberg used to be the world’s third richest man, but he lost over $100 billion in a year due to a plummet in Facebook’s stock price. What is his net worth today?
Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most recognizable faces on planet Earth. He is the founder and CEO of Facebook, one of the most successful social networks ever, and one of the world’s richest men. Facebook and later his other owned platforms earned Zuckerberg a huge net worth that is still one of the world’s largest.
Zuckerberg was at one point the third richest man in the world, with a personal fortune of over $100 billion. His entire net worth is based on Meta, Facebook’s parent company, share value.
Indeed, it is because of Meta’s own decline in stock price that Zuckerberg fell to “just” the 30th position of world’s wealthiest people. Nevertheless, it still remains a more than significant net worth, enough to keep his offspring rich for generations.
Zuckerberg invented Facebook along with Eduardo Severin when the two were in Harvard. Originally, it was a social network designed for university campuses, where students could meet online and share posts about their lives.
Once Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard, Facebook expanded thanks to investments from California-based entrepreneurs. By 2010, it was by far the most popular social network ever, with 500 million subscribers worldwide.
During the 2010s, Facebook would incorporate other successful social medias like Instagram and Whatsapp. In 2021, the three companies were joined under one umbrella: Meta, whose CEO was, of course, Mark Zuckerberg.
The Metaverse
As the 2010s rolled along and the 2020s started, Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg were starting to lose prominence in the social network industry. New players were on the market, most importantly the China-based TikTok, which is today the most widely used social media in the world.
So, Mark Zuckerberg decided to go all in on a new, apparently exciting project: the Metaverse. When the idea was launched, Meta was one of the only 6 companies in history to be worth over $1 trillion.
But nobody, perhaps not even Zuckerberg himself, had any idea what the Metaverse was supposed to be. Some said it was a perfect replica of the real world, others said it was a 3D iteration of the internet. Nobody really knew how to access the Metaverse, and once accessed it didn’t offer much if not anything at all.
And yet, it was a $10 billion project that focused all of Meta and Facebook’s energies. Investors were ever more skeptical, and Meta’s stock price plummeted by 70% in just one year.
Mark Zuckerberg himself lost over $100 billion, barely rebounding back with the start of 2023.
Today, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth amounts to $72.5 billion, still making him one of the world’s richest men. However, the Metaverse doesn’t seem to have saved Facebook from its inevitable fall in popularity. At least for the moment.
