Author: Vince Quill, CoinTelegraph; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
Tech entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg is now the world's fourth-richest billionaire with a net worth of $201 billion, after Facebook changed its name to Meta in October 2021 and expanded into the metaverse hardware and artificial intelligence fields.
As of this writing, Meta's current share price is approximately $567 per share, up more than sixfold since its November 2022 low of approximately $88.
In the year following the name change, Meta's stock price fell sharply from around $300 to its November 2022 low, reflecting investor sentiment towards the company's shift to augmented reality experiences and artificial intelligence development.
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Source: TradingView.
Since then, half of the world’s 10 most valuable companies have begun developing Metaverse hardware, including Apple, Google, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
According to Bloomberg, the tech billionaire's net worth is only surpassed by Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and French businessman Bernard Arnault as of September 2024.
Meta's Metaverse Business and Recent Developments
On September 25, Zuckerberg unveiled Meta's Orion augmented reality glasses at the Meta Connect event in California. The novel glasses feature a small projector that overlays a virtual heads-up display (HUD) on real-world objects.
At the same event, Meta's founder unveiled the newer, cheaper Quest 3S virtual reality headset, which will phase out the earlier Quest 3 128 GB headset.
While Meta’s stock price has soared since the 2021 name change, the company cut its metaverse budget by 20% in July 2024 and told its metaverse division, Reality Labs, to cut departmental spending by 20% by 2026.
Reality Labs has lost $60 billion since 2019 and posted a loss in the second quarter of 2024. One possible reason for this is the division’s alleged shift toward AI applications.
Restructuring and narrowing focus to AI
Zuckerberg has previously said Meta wants to grow its AI business by narrowing the company’s focus and increasing capital investment in AI research.
“We’ve released our first cutting-edge open source AI model, and our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses continue to be popular,” the billionaire explained during a July 31 earnings call.