Amid a broader tech rout, one billionaire, in particular, has seen his fortune get extra squeezed.
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According to Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg lost the most money since the beginning of the year out of the “ultra-rich” tracked on the outlet’s Billionaires Index: a whopping $71 billion.
Musk’s net worth dropped by $6 billion, Bill and Melinda Gates lost $27 and $26 billion, and Jeff Bezos shed $46 billion.
But Zuckerberg’s losses dwarfed them all. The founder of Facebook, renamed Meta Platforms in November, dropped 14 spots in the outlet’s index since the start of the year and now is at No. 20.
Zuckerberg was ranked third on this list in May 2020 with a net worth of $87.8 billion.
In September 2021, he clocked in at $142 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Now, he has an estimated net worth of $55.3 billion.
His fortune is pretty much hitched to Meta’s performance, as the outlet noted. And it wasn’t a great year for the company. Investors are skeptical about Meta’s pivot to focusing on the virtual reality metaverse, for one thing.
The public might also be feeling dubious. Recently, Zuckerberg was roasted online for the apparent simplicity of a picture of his metaverse avatar, (which he later said was a draft of sorts) relative to the cost of the project.
Facebook is also losing out on Generation Z, pretty resoundingly, to TikTok, despite the company’s attempts to replicate short-form video on Instagram and Facebook.
And, as Bloomberg notes, in February, Facebook reported losing users for the first time in its history — and Zuckerberg lost $31 billion that day alone.
In January, Meta was trading at $338 a share, and it’s down to $148 as of Tuesday — a 56% decrease.
