Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has overtaken Jeff Bezos because the second richest person on the earth.
Accordingly, Zuckerberg's net price reached $206.2 billion on Thursday Bloomberg Billionaires Indexwhich exceeds the previous Amazon CEO and president's net price of $205.1 billion. According to the index, the Facebook co-founder is now around $50 billion behind Tesla boss Elon Musk.
With his 13 percent stake in Meta, Zuckerberg's net price has increased by $78 billion for the reason that starting of the yr, greater than that of some other member of the five hundred richest people tracked by the Bloomberg index. Meta shares closed at a record high of $582.77 on Thursday, up about 68% from early January when shares traded at $346.29.
Zuckerberg's rise to second place within the index on Thursday underscores how his personal wealth has grown alongside investor enthusiasm over the social media giant's soaring profits this yr.
Wall Street has consistently cheered Meta throughout 2024 as the corporate has consistently reported quarterly earnings that beat analysts' estimates. In July, Meta said second-quarter revenue rose 22% to $39.07 billion, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth above 20%.
Meta cites its extensive investments in artificial intelligence, which help improve the performance of its internet advertising platform, as the explanation for the sales growth. The company's internet advertising system suffered a significant setback in 2021 when Apple rolled out an iOS privacy update that limited its ability to trace users across the net. Meta announced in February 2022 that the privacy changes would cost the corporate $10 billion in revenue.
In late 2022, Zuckerberg rolled out a sweeping cost-cutting plan that prolonged into the subsequent yr and ultimately resulted in 21,000 meta-employees losing their jobs, representing a couple of quarter of the corporate's workforce.
Investors responded positively to Meta's cost cuts as the corporate's internet advertising business began to get better, boosted by massive digital ad spending campaigns from China-linked retailers Temu and Shien.
As Meta continues to spend billions of dollars on the virtual and augmented reality technologies needed to underpin the futuristic concept of the Metaverse, investors have change into more tolerant of the investments so long as the corporate's core promoting business stays healthy.
Last week, Meta introduced its Orion AR glasses, which received positive reviews from the few individuals who tested the prototype.
Regard: CNBC tests Meta's Orion AR glasses prototype
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