Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg latest member of world's $200 billion club

The $200 billion club has a new member. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become the fourth person in the world to scale the $ 200-billion mark after Tesla’s Elon Musk ($272 billion), Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($211 billion) and LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault ($207 billion). Zuckerberg’s wealth is now worth $201 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

Bulk of Zuckerberg’s fortune is owing to his 13 per cent stake in Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. In fact, the surge in stocks of Meta this year is being accounted as a major reason for a growth of $73.4 billion in Zuckerberg’s wealth this year. The nine months from January to September in 2024 has witnessed Meta scale $560 per share, marking a 60 per cent increase. The company presently trades at 24 times its forward earnings.

Meta also drives Zuckerberg’s latest ambition, the Meta AI project. Zuckerberg spoke extensively on Meta AI at the recent Meta Connect 2024 event last week, underlining the company’s big plans around artificial intelligence. Although Meta AI is yet to launch in a leading market as the European Union, the digital assistant already has more than 500 million monthly users.

Zuckerberg’s rise in fortune comes barely two years after the financial hit he took in 2022, when his metaverse investments caused a decline in his net worth, and erased more than $100 billion.

The turnaround came through strategic planning on Zuckerberg’s part, particularly technological breakthroughs such as Orion, a prototype of augmented reality glasses.