Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg's fortune has taken a substantial hit over the past 13 months.
On Thursday, after Meta reported a decline in profits and revenue in its third quarter report, Zuckerberg's worth took a $11 billion/Ksh1.3 trillion hit, according to Forbes and Bloomberg. It marked the second consecutive quarter drop for the company, which had never reported declining sales prior to this year, per Bloomberg.
Since September 2021, when the 38-year-old Meta CEO's fortune was at its peak, he has lost about $100 billion/Ksh12 trillion, the outlets reported. Although at one point, he was the third richest person in the world per the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, as of Thursday he is ranked 28th, with an estimated fortune of $37.7 billion/Ksh4.4 trillion.
The top three spots are held by Elon Musk at No. 1 with $212 billion/Ksh25.7 trillion, LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault at No. 2 with $142 billion Ksh17.2 trillion, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at No. 3 with $134 billion/16.2 trillion.
Bloomberg reported that although many billionaires have witnessed their fortunes drop this year, Zuckberg's net worth has sustained the biggest loss.
In addition to a decline in profits and revenue, the company's virtual and augmented reality division has lost $9.4 million this year, according to Forbes.
During an earnings call, Zuckerberg addressed the ongoing criticism of the company's investment on growing its virtual world known as the metaverse.
"I know sometimes when we ship products, there's a meme where people say, 'You're spending all this money and you produce this thing,'" Zuckerberg said while speaking about how the metaverse efforts are living up to company expectations. "I think that's not really the right way to think about it."
"Look, I get that a lot of people might disagree with this investment. But from what I can tell, I think that this is going to be a very important thing, and I think it would be a mistake for us to not focus on any of these areas, which I think are going to be fundamentally important to the future," he added.
Facebook, Inc. Changes Company Name to Meta: 'Next Chapter for Our Company,' Says Mark Zuckerberg
When the company's name chance was first announced last year, Meta said the move reflected their focus on building the metaverse, which the company said will be a "hybrid of today's online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world."
"We are at the beginning of the next chapter for the internet, and it's the next chapter for our company too," Zuckerberg wrote in his founder's letter. "The metaverse is the next frontier in connecting people, just like social networking was when we got started."
