Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, now Meta, has seen his legacy drop significantly this year. In a difficult year for almost all the titans of US technology, what stands out is the smashed wealth of the CEO of Meta Platforms Inc. His fortune has halved and not a little, with a decline of 71 billion dollars this’ year, the highest among the ultra-wealthy tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires index. Not that he is penniless but with the current $ 55.9 billion, his net worth has more than halved and he is now in the 20th place among global billionaires, the lowest place since 2014.
Less than two years ago, 38-year-old Zuckerberg was part of an elite of global billionaires, where only names like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates had bigger fortunes than Mr Facebook. His wealth had grown to a peak of $ 142 billion in September 2021, when the company’s stock hit $ 382. The next month, Zuckerberg introduced Meta and changed the company name but from then on the road has largely been downhill, with the company still struggling to find its place in the tech universe. It all started in February, when the company revealed that there has been no growth in monthly Facebook users, triggering a historic share price slump and reducing Zuckerberg’s fortune by $ 31 billion, among the most. big drops in wealth in a single day ever. Other issues relate to Instagram’s gamble on Reels – its answer to TikTok’s short-lived video platform – even though it has a lower value in terms of ad revenue, while the industry at large has been hit by the reduction in marketing spend. due to concerns about the slowdown in the economy. According to Laura Martin, senior internet analyst at Needham & Co, the stock was also dragged down by the company’s investments in the metaverse. Zuckerberg said he expects the project to lose “significant” sums over the next three to five years. In the meantime, Meta “needs to retrieve these users from TikTok,” Martin said. The company is also hampered by “excessive control and regulatory intervention”.
The Menlo Park, California-based firm is faring worse in 2022 than most of its FAANG colleagues. This year it fell by about 57%, much more than the drops of 14% of Apple, 26% of Amazon and 29% of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Meta is even narrowing the 2022 loss gap compared to Netflix, which has dropped by about 60%. If it weren’t for its commitment to virtual reality, the social media giant “would be more in line with Alphabet,” said Mandeep Singh, a technology analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.