Derek Saul has covered markets for the Forbes news team since 2021.
Facebook cofounder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was rewarded handsomely by Meta stock’s post-earnings rally, getting a $11 billion boost to his massive fortune.
Mark Zuckerberg got much richer Thursday.
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Key Facts
Zuckerberg’s net worth jumped from $167 billion to $178 billion on Thursday as Meta’s share price rose by 6%, its second-biggest gain of the last year (most of Zuckerberg’s net worth comes from his 13% stake in Meta).
The bump sent Zuckerberg from the world’s fifth-wealthiest person to its third-richest person, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires tracker, surpassing Europe’s richest man, LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault ($177 billion), and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison ($172 billion).
Zuckerberg now trails just fellow Americans in Tesla CEO Elon Musk ($237 billion net worth) and Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos ($205 billion) in riches.
Surprising Fact
Zuckerberg is more than three times as rich as he was in September 2022, when his fortune fell to below $60 billion as Meta stock flailed, knocking him out of Forbes’ ranking of the 10 richest people for the first time since 2015.
Key Background
His fortune recovered as Meta’s stock did, with shares up nearly 500% from their 2022 bottom, as investors flocked back to the stock as the company recovered from a dreadful four-quarter stretch of double-digit annual profit declines. Meta is the sixth-most valuable company in the world at a $1.3 trillion market capitalization. Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg all own unusually large individual stakes in massive public companies, with Bezos owning about 9% of Amazon, Musk roughly 12% of Tesla and Zuckerberg about 13% of Meta. Thursday’s rally came after Meta easily topped analyst forecasts for both profits and sales and Zuckerberg calmed fears about runaway expenses tied to artificial intelligence development.
