The CEO and co-founder of “Meta,” Mark Zuckerberg, added $28 billion to his balance after a significant surge in the stocks of the parent company of social media giants Facebook and Instagram.
With the closing of “Meta” stock, Zuckerberg’s net worth grew to $165 billion, making him richer than Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. Additionally, the young billionaire will also receive approximately $174 million in cash with the first distributions to shareholders in March.
Zuckerberg owns around 350 million Class A and Class B shares, both of which are eligible for profits.
In 2021, Zuckerberg’s net worth peaked at around $142 billion, according to Bloomberg’s billionaire index, when the Nasdaq index reached a new record level. However, the market correction afterward hit Meta harder than its counterparts in Silicon Valley, and investors and analysts strongly criticized the company for investing billions of dollars in virtual reality technologies without tangible benefits.
Meta became the best-performing company in Wall Street history as the company’s stock rose by approximately 21%, adding around $200 billion to the company’s market value, which is the largest market cap increase in a single session in U.S. market history.
At the end of trading on Friday, Meta’s stock rose by 20.3% to $474.99, adding $197 billion to its market cap, bringing it to $1.21 trillion. Meta announced on Thursday that it achieved profits of $14 billion in the last three months of the previous year, surpassing analysts’ expectations.
The technology giant, which owns Facebook and Instagram, stated that revenues rose to $40.1 billion in this quarter, with about 3.1 billion people using the social network monthly.
Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, added in the earnings report that “the (last) quarter was good, with our community and businesses continuing to grow.”
