Now, Mark Zuckerberg surpasses Jeff Bezos to become the second richest person in the world

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zuckerberg’s net worth increased to $206.2 billion on Thursday, surpassing the $205.1 billion of the former president and CEO of Amazon. According to the index, the co-founder of Facebook currently behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk by about $50 billion.

Zuckerberg’s net worth has increased by $78 billion since the start of the year because to his 13% share in Meta, more than any other person on the Forbes 500 list that the Bloomberg Index tracks. At $582.77, Meta’s shares ended at a record high on Thursday. This is a 68% increase from the company’s early January trading price of $346.29.

Wall Street has been jubilant about Meta for the entirety of 2024 since the business has routinely released quarterly results that have above analyst projections. Meta said in July that revenues for the second quarter increased by 22% to $39.07 billion, which was the company’s fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth above 20%.

Meta has attributed its revenue rise to its significant investments in artificial intelligence, which it says are helping to improve the effectiveness of its online advertising platform. In 2021, the corporation’s online advertising strategy faced a significant blow when Apple released an iOS privacy upgrade that made it more difficult for the company to follow people online. According to Meta, the privacy measures would result in a $10 billion loss in sales by February 2022.

Zuckerberg launched a significant cost-cutting initiative in late 2022, which continued into the following year and ultimately led to the layoff of 21,000 Meta employees, or over 25% of the company’s employment.

The few people who have tested the prototype of Meta’s Orion augmented reality glasses have given it excellent reviews since its introduction last week.