Mark Zuckerberg’s $71 Billion Wealth Wipeout. Mark Zuckerberg’s foray into the metaverse has cost him heavily. Even in a difficult year for nearly every US tech titan, the wealth wiped out from Meta Platforms Inc. stands out.
His fortune has been slashed in half and then some, with a $71 billion reduction so far this year, the largest among the ultra-rich tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His net worth of $55.9 billion places him 20th among global billionaires, his lowest position since 2014, and below three Waltons and two Koch family members.
It was less than two years ago that Zuckerberg, 38, was worth $106 billion and was part of an elite group of global billionaires that included only Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. His fortune peaked at $142 billion in September 2021, when the company’s stock reached $382.
The next month, Zuckerberg launched Meta and renamed the firm Facebook Inc. And it’s gone mostly downhill since then as it tries to regain its foothold in the tech world.
Its most recent earnings reports have been bleak. It began in February, when the firm disclosed no growth in monthly Facebook users, causing a historic drop in its stock price and lowering Zuckerberg’s income by $31 billion, one of the largest one-day drops in wealth ever. Other challenges include Instagram’s bet on Reels, its answer to TikTok’s short-form video platform, despite the fact that it is worth less in advertising revenue, and the industry as a whole being hurt by marketing spending owing to concerns about an economic slowdown.
According to Laura Martin, senior internet analyst at Needham & Co., the stock is also being pulled down by the company’s investments in the metaverse. Zuckerberg has stated that he expects the initiative to lose “substantial” money over the next three to five years.
Meanwhile, Meta “needs to gain these users back from TikTok,” according to Martin. She also believes it is harmed by “excessive regulatory scrutiny and intervention.”
Mark Zuckerberg’s $71 Billion Wealth Wipeout.
In 2022, the Menlo Park, California-based company will perform worse than the majority of its FAANG counterparts. It’s down around 57% this year, considerably higher than Apple Inc.’s 14% drop, Amazon.com Inc.’s 26% drop, and Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s 29% drop. Meta is even closing the 2022 loss gap with Netflix Inc., which is down over 60%.
Without its venture into virtual reality, Facebook “would be more in line with where Alphabet is,” according to Mandeep Singh, a technology analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. He believes Meta may avoid this problem by spinning out some of its other operations, like WhatsApp or Instagram.
Almost all of Zuckerberg’s fortune is invested in Meta stock. According to the company’s most recent proxy statement, he owns more than 350 million shares. At 12:22 p.m. in New York, the price was unchanged at $146.18.
Zuckerberg has attempted a sort of rebranding. In a three-hour chat on Joe Rogan’s podcast, he frequently referred to himself as a “product designer” and shared a video of himself practicing mixed martial arts.
