Mark Zuckerberg Loses $88 Billion in Big Meta Miss

The net worth of Mark Zuckerberg has dropped by $11 billion, totalling a $88 billion loss in just 10 months, as his Meta Platforms Inc. reported losses for the second straight quarter.

Zuckerberg, 38, currently has a net worth of $37.7 billion, a dramatic fall from a peak of $142 billion in September 2021, according to data compiled from Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Even while many of the world’s wealthiest people have seen their fortunes decline this year, the Meta founder has experienced the single-largest loss among those on the wealth list.

Mark Zuckerberg has made an effort to defend both the artificial intelligence causing huge changes in the world and Meta’s rising costs to support its version of virtual reality, the metaverse.

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The declining of Facebook’s market value

Facebook’s parent company’s market value has dropped by an astounding $676 billion this year, ejecting it from the top 20 US firms. 

Mark Zuckerberg said he was certain that Meta’s greatest bets in fields including short-form video, business communications, and the metaverse were headed in the right direction even though he couldn’t be positive about the precise scale of the return.

Prior to 2022, Meta had never reported declining sales, but in the second consecutive quarter, revenue fell by 4.5% from the previous year.

The social networking platform is contending with rising costs while funding its virtual reality platform. On Thursday, Meta’s stock opened 25% lower on the Nasdaq.

Zuckerberg said, in relation to the company’s focus on the metaverse, “I recognise that a lot of people could disagree with this investment. The Menlo Park-based company changed its name from Facebook to Meta a year ago. He stood by the pivot calling it “fundamentally crucial to the future.”

How much shares Mark Zuckerberg owns 

Zuckerberg owns more than 350 million shares of the social media company, according to its most recent proxy statement. On the Bloomberg wealth index, he had previously been rated third, behind only Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. At the end of Thursday, he was in 28th place.

Meta has already had to contend with a reduction in marketer spending as a result of the state of the economy and a change in Apple Inc.’s privacy policy that rendered all social media adverts less effective. 

The company has decreased spending by restricting recruitment, concentrating on a fewer number of objectives in order to maintain the relevancy of its social media platforms and increase its virtual reality products.

The company, which changed its name from Facebook to Meta last year, is also betting heavily on the metaverse, a network of virtual reality-powered communities that CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks will be the hub of work and communication in the future. 

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