Mark Zuckerberg Meta’s chief executive became the third-richest person in the world on Thursday, thanks to the tech giant’s latest stock rally off of better-than-expected quarterly earnings.
Shares of Facebook parent Meta Platforms were up 6% in mid-day trading, to $504.31 apiece. The company, which reported second-quarter earnings Wednesday that included $39 billion in inflows, now has a market capitalization of $1.25 trillion.
This has given Zuckerberg a roughly $10 billion boost to his net worth, which was valued at $176.8 billion as of Thursday, per Forbes’ Billionaires List. Zuckerberg is neck and neck with LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault on the list.
The Meta leader still trails behind Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose net worth sits near $237 billion, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is valued around $204 billion.
The company’s revenues beat Wall Street’s expectations by roughly $800 million, according to estimates compiled by FactSet. Meanwhile, its capital expenditures and losses resulting from its metaverse division weren’t nearly as bad as expected.
“We had a strong quarter, and Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We’ve released the first frontier-level open source AI model, we continue to see good traction with our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, and we’re driving good growth across our apps.”
Meta confirmed, however, that it’s still expecting “significant capital expenditures growth in 2025.” But Zuckerberg is betting big on Meta’s dominance in the AI space, claiming that Meta’s recently-released Llama 3.1 will be “the most advanced in the industry” by the beginning of next year. And he has shown he’s willing to spend — and overspend — to continue Meta’s AI advancements and keep pace with competitors.
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