According to Cointelegraph, tech entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg has ascended to the position of the world's fourth-wealthiest billionaire, boasting a net worth of $201 billion. This milestone follows Facebook's rebranding to Meta in October 2021 and its subsequent expansion into metaverse hardware and artificial intelligence. Meta's stock is currently trading at approximately $567 per share, a significant increase from its November 2022 lows of around $88 per share.
In the year following the rebrand, Meta's stock experienced a sharp decline from the $300 range to the November 2022 lows, reflecting investor sentiment towards the company's pivot to augmented reality experiences and AI development. Since then, half of the world's 10 most valuable companies, including Apple, Google, Nvidia, and Microsoft, have started developing metaverse hardware. As of September 2024, Zuckerberg's net worth places him behind Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and French businessman Bernard Arnault, according to Bloomberg.
At a Meta Connect event in California on September 25, Zuckerberg unveiled Meta's Orion augmented reality glasses, featuring small projectors that create a virtual heads-up display overlayed over real-world objects. Additionally, he introduced the newer, more affordable Quest 3S virtual reality headset, which will replace the earlier Quest 3 128 GB headset. Despite the significant rise in Meta's stock price since the rebrand, the company reduced its metaverse budget by 20% in July 2024 and instructed its metaverse division, Reality Labs, to cut department expenses by 20% by 2026. Reality Labs has incurred losses of $60 billion since 2019 and posted losses for the second business quarter of 2024, possibly due to a shift towards artificial intelligence applications.
Zuckerberg is positioning Meta to expand its AI business by narrowing the company's focus and increasing capital investment in AI research. He highlighted the release of the first frontier-level open-source AI model and the positive reception of the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses during a July 31 earnings call.
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