The world owes Mark Zuckerberg an apology as the Facebook boss’s fortune has increased fivefold since the 2021-2022 criticism period and he is likely to become the richest person on the planet this year.
51 billion USD
Business Insider (BI) said that for the first time in history, Mark Zuckerberg could surpass Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to become the richest billionaire in the world by 2024.
Since the beginning of the year, the total assets of the Meta (Facebook) owner have increased by 51 billion USD, reaching 179 billion USD according to statistics of Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s assets only increased by 19 billion USD and Jeff Bezos’s by 25 billion USD.
Mark Zuckerberg is currently behind Elon Musk ($248 billion), Jeff Bezos ($202 billion) and Bernard Arnault ($180 billion) in the rankings of the world’s richest people.
If at the beginning of 2024, the Facebook founder was only ranked 6th, he is now competing for the 3rd position with Arnault, thereby showing a huge growth in assets in 2024.
According to BI, although they are still behind Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, thanks to the rising price of technology stocks, they can be quickly leveled.
Elon Musk himself will only have $164 billion in April 2024, while Jeff Bezos is still less than Mark Zuckerberg’s current assets in early January this year.
Therefore, just a few sessions of Tesla and Amazon’s decline and Meta’s increase are enough for Mark Zuckerberg to do something that has never happened before, which is to become the richest billionaire in the world.
BI said that although Meta, Tesla and Amazon are all technology stocks, while Mark Zuckerberg does not face many challenges, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are facing many problems, from antitrust investigations, personal lawsuits, poor business results reports to other troubles.
Any negative event could drag down Tesla and Amazon stock prices, giving Mark Zuckerberg a chance to rise.
In addition, BI newspaper believes that Facebook’s boss could also usurp the throne if Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos donate large amounts of assets to charity.
After all, the reason Warren Buffett cannot become the richest person on the planet with a fortune of more than 300 billion USD is because this investor has donated more than half of his shares in Berkshire Hathaway to charity.
So the same could happen to the Tesla boss and Amazon founder.
Another factor that could affect the position of the world’s richest person is that Mark Zuckerberg is only 40 years old, much younger than Elon Musk (53 years old) and Jeff Bezos (60 years old).
So the Facebook founder has more time to build his fortune, and has a different perspective from billionaires who do charity in their old age.
Warren Buffett himself gave away 99% of his assets after the age of 65, showing that billionaires’ views on wealth accumulation will change a lot over time.
Increase 5 times
Having founded Facebook at the age of 19 and listed the company on the stock exchange in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg is considered one of the icons of today’s young technology generation.
Currently, Meta (Facebook) is the 7th largest company in the market with a total capitalization of 1.3 trillion USD, surpassing many big names such as Berkshire Hathaway (989 billion USD), Tesla (723 billion USD), Walmart (633 billion USD) or JP Morgan Chase (585 billion USD).
According to BI, the whole world owes Mark Zuckerberg an apology for doubting the founder in 2021.
During the period September 2021-November 2022, shareholders and investors criticized Mark Zuckerberg for pouring tens of billions of dollars into the virtual universe without bringing any real benefits.
This bombshell caused Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune to drop to just $35 billion at one point.
But since then, the stock price has increased fivefold, increasing Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune by the same amount.
In the past year alone, Meta’s stock price has increased 65% and surpassed a record $500/share.
Investors’ expectations for Mark Zuckerberg are currently very high as the founder has limited his indiscriminate spending on the virtual universe, instead tightening cost control by laying off workers en masse, and pouring money into key technology areas such as artificial intelligence.
After reporting better-than-expected second-quarter 2024 earnings, Mark Zuckerberg and CFO Susan Li said AI has helped Meta grow faster than competitors in the digital advertising market, which is the company’s core business.
CNBC reported that Meta’s revenue in the second quarter of 2024 increased 22% compared to the same period last year, to $39.07 billion. Of which, about 98% of sales came from advertising, mainly on Facebook and Instagram.
This growth rate is twice as high as Google’s advertising revenue.
