Following a series of massive financial hits to his business, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is no longer one of the 10 richest people in America. He was unceremoniously dropped off the list following the loss of half of his fortune in the last year.
Forbes reports that for the first time since 2015, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is no longer one of the 10 richest people in America. Zuckerberg’s fortune has been halved, losing a massive $76.8 billion since September 2021 which dropped him from the number three spot on the Forbes 400 list of the U.S.’ wealthiest people to number 11.
Zuckerberg is still worth $57.7 billion, a figure calculated based on stock prices from September 2. Zuckerberg now falls behind Walmart heir Jim Walton, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, and fellow tech entrepreneurs such as ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Facebook (now Meta) has seen a huge drop in its stock price with hares plunging 57 percent since last year’s Forbes 400, which used stock prices from September 3, 2021. Tech stocks have taken a fall overall, but Facebook’s fall outpaces both the Nasdaq at -9.8 percent and the S&P 500 at -13.5 percent. Investors are reportedly worried about Apple’s iOS 14 privacy update that made it harder for tech companies to track users across apps and target them with ads, having a huge effect on Facebook’s ads business.
Less than two years ago, Zuckerberg was worth $106 billion and ranked among an elite group of billionaires with only Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates placing above him in terms of personal wealth. In September 2021, Zuckerberg’s own worth reached $142 billion when Facebook shares reached as high as $382.
A month later, Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta and announced that the company would be focusing on building a digital metaverse. It has been largely downhill for Zuckerberg and the company since then as he fails to convince many that working, socializing, and living in a digital world via VR headsets is the future of the internet.
In February, Facebook revealed no growth in monthly users which triggered a historic collapse in its stock price and cut Zuckerberg’s fortune by $31 billion. Facebook’s app Instagram has also been attempting to bet on Reels, its TikTok competitor, despite it being worth less in advertising revenue and many users complaining about the app’s pivot towards video.
The company’s investment in the metaverse has also hurt the stock price according to Laura Martin, senior internet analyst at Needham & Co. Zuckerberg himself has admitted that the project will lose a “significant” amount of money in the next three to five years.
In July, Facebook reported its first-ever quarterly revenue decline, a 1 percent drop to $28.8 billion. Mark Zgutowicz, an analyst at research and investment banking firm Benchmark, commented: “Facebook makes most of its money from advertising, and now it just doesn’t have that data anymore. All those data signals went away, which basically means that advertisers are having trouble telling whether a campaign was successful or not.”
Read more at Forbes here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan