Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of social media company Meta (Facebook), has become the second richest person in the world at present. Zuckerberg has surpassed Jeff Bezos. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zuckerberg's net worth reached $206.2 billion on October 3, 2024. This is above the former Amazon CEO and chairman's net worth of $205.1 billion. According to CNBC news, however, Mark Zuckerberg is nearly $50 billion behind the world's number one richest person, Tesla chief Elon Musk.

Zuckerberg's wealth increased by $ 78 billion

According to the news, Mark Zuckerberg owns a 13% stake in Meta. His total wealth has increased by $78 billion since the beginning of the year. This is more than any member of the 500 richest people tracked by the Bloomberg Index. Zuckerberg's rise to second place on the index on Thursday shows that this year his personal wealth has increased tremendously along with investors' enthusiasm about the growing profits of the social media giant.

Meta stock price

According to the report, Meta's shares closed at a record high of $582.77 on Thursday. This represents a rise of about 68% since the beginning of January when its shares were trading at $346.29. Wall Street has consistently cheered Meta throughout the year. The company has consistently reported quarterly earnings that have exceeded analysts' estimates. Let us tell you, in July, Meta said that its second quarter sales rose 22% to $39.07 billion. This represents the fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth above 20%.

AI investment provided great help

The social media company attributed its sales growth to its heavy artificial intelligence (AI) investments to help improve the performance of its online advertising platform. According to CNBC, the company's online advertising system suffered a major setback in 2021 when Apple introduced an iOS privacy update that weakened its ability to track users across the web. In February 2022, Meta said the privacy change would cost it $10 billion in revenue.