Mark Zuckerberg has surpassed Jeff Bezos to become the second richest person in the world. What is the wealth of the founder of Meta?

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, has surpassed Jeff Bezos to become the second richest person in the world, according to CNBC.

Zuckerberg’s net worth reached 206.2 billion dollars on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg index of billionaires, surpassing the net worth of 205.1 billion dollars of the former CEO and president of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, writes News.ro .

The Facebook co-founder now trails Tesla CEO Elon Musk by around $50 billion, the index showed.

With his 13% stake in Meta, Zuckerberg’s net worth has increased by $78 billion since the start of the year, more than any member of the 500 richest people tracked by the Bloomberg Index.

Meta shares closed Thursday at a record high of $582.77, representing a jump of about 68% from early January, when its shares were trading at $346.29. As of Friday, Meta shares are still up 0.81% at $587.51 per unit.

Zuckerberg’s rise to second place in the Bloomberg index reflects how his personal wealth has grown alongside investors’ enthusiasm for the social media giant’s growing profits this year.

Wall Street has consistently supported Meta through 2024 as the company has consistently reported quarterly earnings that beat analyst estimates. In July, Meta reported that sales in its second quarter rose 22 percent to $39.07 billion, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth of up to 20 percent.

Meta pointed out that its large investments in artificial intelligence have helped improve the performance of its online advertising platform. The company’s online advertising system suffered a shutdown in 2021 when Apple introduced an iOS privacy update that weakened its ability to track users across the web. Meta said in February 2022 that privacy changes would cost $10 billion in revenue.

At the end of 2022, Zuckerberg instituted a major restructuring plan that continued into the next year and ultimately resulted in job losses for 21,000 Meta employees, or about a quarter of the company’s workforce.

Investors responded favorably to Meta’s cost cutting, while the company’s online advertising business began to recover and was supported by Temu and Shein’s advertising campaigns.

While Meta has continued to spend billions of dollars on the virtual and augmented reality technologies needed to support the futuristic concept of the metaverse, investors have become more tolerant of investments while the company’s core business remains healthy.

Last week, Meta launched the Orion AR glasses, which garnered positive reviews from the few people who tested the prototype.

Editor: CLB