Mark Zuckerberg lost half his fortune and is no longer among the 10 richest people in the world

For the first time since 2015, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg not one of the 10 richest people in America.

Zuckerberg has lost more than half of his fortune, a staggering $76.8 billionsince September 2021, which has taken him from third place in the forbes 400 list of the richest people in the United States, to No. 11, with a total of US$ 57.7 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg lost more than $76 billion in the last year.

Since September 2, Zuckeberg has been following Walmart heir Jim Walton, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and other tech moguls including former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Google founders. , Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Nobody in the United States has lost as much money in the last year as the founder of Facebook.

Why Mark Zuckerberg Loses Money

Meta’s (formerly Facebook) stock price crash has a lot to do with its falling out of the top 10. Stocks have plunged 57% since last year’s Forbes 400which used stock prices from September 3, 2021. Tech stocks are generally on the downside with the market downturn, but Meta’s decline outperforms both the Nasdaq (-9.8%) and the S&P 500 ( -13.5%), as well as the 14% drop in Microsoft, the 25% drop in Alphabet, parent of Google, and the 27% drop in Amazon.

Investors are spooked by an update to Apple’s privacy policy, which makes it harder for tech companies to track users in apps, hurting Meta’s ad sales. Meta reported its first quarterly revenue decline in July: a 1% drop, to $28.8 billion.

“Facebook makes most of its money from advertising, and now it just doesn’t have that data anymore,” says Mark Zgutowicz, an analyst at investment banking and research firm Benchmark. And he adds: “All of those data signals are gone, which basically means advertisers have trouble knowing if a campaign was successful or not.”

To compound Meta’s problem, TikTok is attracting advertisers, along with lucrative Generation Z and millennial users. In February, Meta announced its first quarterly loss of daily active users. A recent internal report showed that Meta’s TikTok clone, Instagram Reels, is struggling to compete, according to a report of Wall Street Journal.

The responsibility of the metaverse

Under normal circumstances, a slight drop in revenue might be manageable, but Meta is also investing heavily in VR and the metaverse, which is dragging down operating profit. In 2021, the company’s metaverse division, Meta Reality Labs, lost $10 billion. While the metaverse is all Zuckerberg wants to talk about, investors are less than enthusiastic so far. “It’s a long-tail investment and, for now, it’s kind of a cash sucker,” says Zgutowicz.

Zuckerberg’s story as a millionaire

Zuckerberg first became a billionaire in 2008, just four years after founding Facebook. At 23, he was the youngest self-made billionaire at the time, debuting at No. 321 on The Forbes 400, worth US$1.5 billion. By 2011, Zuckerberg’s net worth had increased nearly 12-fold to $17.5 billion.

This year isn’t the first time Zuckerberg’s net worth has plummeted. After Facebook’s famously disappointing IPO in 2012, Zuckerberg fell from 14th to 36th on The Forbes 400. But it didn’t last long. The following year, Zuckerberg bounced back, and so far his fortune has continued to rise.

Despite the controversies and scandals that plagued the company, Facebook’s advertising machine had reliably generated enough money to impress investors. which brought Zuckerberg’s net worth to $134.5 billion last yearhis highest net worth to date.

Mark Zuckerberg invests US$150 million to bring the metaverse to universities.
Zuckerberg has already invested $10 billion in his metaverse but has yet to turn a profit

Where will you be next year? Nearly all of Zuckerberg’s wealth is tied up in Meta stock, according to Forbes estimates, meaning he is gambling the company’s long-term prospects, and his enormous fortune, on the metaverse. It remains to be seen if he can overcome the first stumbles.

When Zuckerberg last month posted a selfie on Meta’s new virtual reality social network, Horizon Worlds, it was universally mocked. He later admitted that the photo was “pretty basic” and promised major updates to the graphics soon. Meta shares are down 8% since then.

*Note originally published in Forbes USA.

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Mark Zuckerberg lost half his fortune and is no longer among the 10 richest people in the world