At the Meta Connect developer conference, Facebook Meta team leader Mark Zuckerberg showed off a prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses.
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Yuan Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has surpassed Jeff Bezos to become the world's second-richest person.
According to financial reports, Zuckerberg's net worth reached $206.2 billion on Thursday. Bloomberg Billionaires Indexsurpassing the net worth of the former Amazon CEO and President of $205.1 billion. The Facebook co-founder is now worth about $50 billion behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to the index.
With his 13% stake in Meta, Zuckerberg's net worth has increased by $78 billion since the beginning of the year, more than any of the 500 richest people tracked by Bloomberg Indexes. Meta shares closed at an all-time high of $582.77 on Thursday, up about 68% from $346.29 in early January.
Zuckerberg rose to No. 2 on the index on Thursday, underscoring the growth of his personal fortune amid investor enthusiasm for the social media giant's growing profits this year.
Wall Street has been cheering Meta throughout 2024 as the company has consistently reported quarterly earnings that topped analysts' expectations. In July, Meta said second-quarter sales grew 22% to $39.07 billion, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth exceeding 20%.
Meta cited its heavy investments in artificial intelligence as helping to improve the effectiveness of its online advertising platform as a reason for its sales growth. The company's online advertising system suffered a major setback in 2021 when Apple rolled out an iOS privacy update that weakened its ability to track users across the web. Meta said in February 2022 that privacy changes would cost it $10 billion in revenue.
In late 2022, Zuckerberg laid out a major cost-cutting plan that extended into next year and ultimately resulted in the loss of 21,000 Meta employees, about a quarter of the company's workforce.
Investors responded favorably to Meta's cost cuts, while the company's online advertising business began to rebound, supported by large digital ad spending campaigns by Chinese-related retailers Temu and Shien.
While Meta continues to spend billions on the virtual and augmented reality technology needed to support future concepts in the Metaverse, investors will become more tolerant of these investments as long as the company's core advertising business remains healthy.
Last week, Meta unveiled its Orion AR glasses, which received positive reviews from the handful of people who tested the prototype.
watch: CNBC reviews Meta’s Orion AR glasses prototype
