Zuckerberg’s net worth rises to third in the world! Make a desperate move to lead the Meta Stud universe to achieve results

Technology giant Meta’s stock price continues to hit new highs! Since the 6th of last month, Meta’s stock price has climbed from $500.27. As of today, Meta's stock price has reached a new high of $595.94, with a month-on-month increase of 18.06% and a year-to-date increase of an astonishing 72.09%.

Zuckerberg’s net worth rises to third in the world

In addition, due to the rapid rise in stock prices, Meta CEO Zuckerberg's net worth has reached the third highest level in the world, with a net worth of US$206 billion, second only to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison's net worth of US$208 billion. And Musk, the world’s richest man, has a net worth of US$264 billion.

Source: Forbes Global Real-Time Rich List

Zuckerberg's net worth in 2021 was US$97 billion, which shrank to approximately US$64 billion in 2023, but this year has soared to a new high of US$206 billion. According to Forbes, he currently owns 13% of Meta shares, so changes in Meta's stock price have a huge impact on Zuckerberg's assets.

Related reading：Mark Zuckerberg Crowned Fourth Richest with Over $200 Million Fortune – Is the Expansion into Metaverse and AI the Key?

All in Virtual Reality Metaverse

In October 2021, Zuckerberg officially announced that Facebook would be renamed Meta, redefining the company's future into the metaverse.

At that time, Zuckerberg emphasized that the Metaverse was the next new field, and Meta expected to invest billions of dollars in the next few years to help the Metaverse achieve economies of scale and become the successor to Web2.0:

Our (Meta) vision is that within the next ten years, the Metaverse can reach more than 1 billion people, undertake hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce, and provide support for millions of creators and developers.

However, "ideals are full and reality is skinny." In August 2022, the virtual avatar (Avatar) made by Horizon Worlds, the prototype of the metaverse interactive space planned by Meta, was ridiculed by the community for being very outdated, and also criticized by the community. Meta's metaverse plan "goes back 20 years", just like the characters created in 2002.

Then in 2023, the concept of the Metaverse continued to subside, and the AI ​​craze led by ChatGPT gradually emerged. However, Meta continued to burn money in the Metaverse field. From the beginning of 2022 to Q2 2023, it had accumulated losses of US$21 billion. Large losses made the market start. It is doubtful that Meta will cut its losses on the Metaverse plan and turn to the development of "large language models" focusing on AI. However, Zuckerberg firmly stated in a conference call at the time:

Meta will currently focus on AI, and will continue to focus on the Metaverse business in the long term. The two actually complement each other.

However, with Meta launching its new headset Meta Quest 3 in October 2023, everything seems to be moving in the right direction. Apple’s first MR head-mounted device, Vision Pro, launched in February this year, helped Quest3 win in this competition.

At Meta Connect, Meta's annual developer conference held on the 26th of last month, Zuckerberg showed off the AR glasses prototype "Orion". The lighter glasses perfectly covered up the bulky shortcomings of the head-mounted device, although it was cumbersome. Koberg said there are still many areas for improvement, but the conference still amazed many attendees.

Meta AR

In addition, at this Meta Connect, the popular Ray-Ban Meta glasses were also unveiled again. Zuckerberg used the translation function of Ray-Ban Meta to conduct conversations in different languages ​​with the demonstrators.

In addition, the lens can also be used to scan QR Codes, take photos to extract information from photo text, and even remind you of some daily life events by taking photos. As Meta AI is also integrated into Ray-Ban Meta, it can be expected that more AI functions will be developed in the future.

With the exposure of the Meta AR glasses prototype Orion, the market was shocked to realize that Zuckerberg's original statement that "in the next ten years, the Metaverse will cover one billion people" was not just empty talk.

Related reading：Meta Ditches High-End VR Headset, Debuting New Low-Cost Quest 3S VR Headset Set at Connect Conference in September

Tens of thousands of layoffs and the emergence of Threads

However, in addition to the Metaverse and AI, Meta actually has to implement many appropriate decisions to enable the company to go forward in the long run. First of all, according to the "Business Weekly" report, Meta will launch a new round of layoffs in March 2023, with a scale of up to 10,000 people. This is another major layoff after laying off 11,000 people in December 2022. Zuckerberg even said 2023 is the “Year of Efficiency”.

Zuckerberg also stated in a company blog post at the time that the company would announce a restructuring plan in the next few months, focusing on "flattening the organization, deleting less important projects, and reducing recruitment."

In addition, Meta will also launch a new social platform Threads in 2023. According to data, it took only 5 days for Threads to exceed 100 million users. At first, when Threads was launched, it was considered by the outside world to be imitating the business model of social platform X. However, after a year of baptism, the number of monthly active users of Threads has grown to more than 200 million.