On the Meta Connect developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg, head of the Facebook group Meta, shows the prototype of computer glasses that may display digital objects in transparent lenses.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has surpassed Jeff Bezos because the world’s second richest person.
Zuckerberg’s net price reached $206.2 billion on Thursday, in line with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, topping the $205.1 billion net price of the previous Amazon CEO and president. The Facebook co-founder now trails Tesla chief Elon Musk by roughly $50 billion, the index showed.
Together with his 13% stake in Meta, Zuckerberg’s net-worth has risen by $78 billion because the starting of the 12 months, which is greater than any member of the of the five hundred richest folks that the Bloomberg Index tracks. Meta shares closed at a record high on Thursday at $582.77, representing a roughly 68% jump from early January when its shares were trading at $346.29.
Zuckerberg’s rise to the second spot on the index on Thursday underscores how his personal wealth has grown alongside investor enthusiasm over the social media giant’s rising profits this 12 months.
Wall Street has repeatedly cheered Meta throughout 2024 as the corporate has consistently reported quarterly earnings which have surpassed analyst estimates. In July, Meta said that its second-quarter sales grew 22% to $39.07 billion, marking the fourth straight quarter of revenue growth topping 20%.
Meta has pointed to its hefty artificial intelligence investments as helping improve the performance of its internet advertising platform as a reason for its sales growth. The corporate’s internet advertising system suffered a significant setback in 2021 when Apple introduced an iOS privacy update that weakened its ability to trace users across the online. Meta in February 2022 said that the privacy changes would cost it $10 billion in revenue.
In late 2022, Zuckerberg instituted a significant cost-cutting plan that prolonged into the subsequent 12 months and ultimately resulted in 21,000 Meta employees losing their jobs, or roughly 1 / 4 of the corporate’s workforce.
Investors reacted favorably to Meta’s cost cutting while the corporate’s internet advertising business began to rebound and was bolstered by the huge digital ad spending campaigns by Chinese-linked retailers Temu and Shien.
While Meta has continued spending billions of dollars on the virtual and augmented reality technologies needed to underpin the futuristic concept of the metaverse, investors have turn out to be more tolerant of the investments so long as the corporate’s core ad business stays healthy.
Last week, Meta debuted its Orion AR glasses, which garnered positive reviews from the few individuals who have tested the prototype.
Watch: CNBC reviews Meta’s Orion AR glasses prototype
