Mark Zuckerberg first developed Facebook alongside fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes while attending Harvard University in 2004. As the website gained traction, beginning to be used at other universities, he dropped out of Harvard to focus entirely on his growing business.
Forward to today, Zuckerberg is the CEO and chair of Meta, which had more than 2.8 billion monthly active users (as of Quarter one of 2021). He now owns about 12% of the Facebook stocks, which he took public in May 2012.
Meta, what was formerly known as Facebook, has turned into somewhat of a social media conglomerate with Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. acquired over the years and now under its umbrella, making itself an inevitability in today’s digital world.
Zuckerberg is estimated to be worth around $113.5B, making him the fifth richest man on the planet at the moment.
Of late, he has seen a sharp decline in his number. Facebook’s recent outage and the alleged whistle-blowers making bold claims about the company, its ways and the CEO, prepared to testify before Congress, has cost Zuckerberg close to $6 billion. As the Facebook shares plunged 4.9%, Forbes reported similar figures, saying Zuckerberg’s fortune dropped to $117 billion – a $5.9 billion decline. It only fell further from there.
However, the most recent development in the world of Facebook, the redirection and the change of name to Meta seems to have boded well, financially, for the CEO. They are now in the green.
He does not seem to have any flashy, billionaire-worthy vices and is known for his rather simple disposition.
Back in December of 2015, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook stake over their lifetimes. The two founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015, with each of them serving as co-CEO. This charity seeks to leverage technology to fix societal ills, such as improving the access and quality of education, reforming both the criminal justice system and the U.S. immigration system, improving housing affordability, and eventually eradicating all diseases.
