The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, is now the second richest person in the world, surpassing Jeff Bezos, the CEO of retailer Amazon.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth reached a new high of $206 billion on Friday, trailing only Elon Musk ($256 billion), the CEO of electric vehicle company Tesla.
Jeff Bezos, who lost $2.6 billion in value on the day, was third with $205 billion.
Since announcing higher-than-expected sales in the second quarter and highlighting its efforts to develop the kind of big language models that underpin AI chatbots, Meta’s shares have increased by 23%. The stock closed Thursday at an all-time high of $582.77.
In an effort to take the lead in the AI competition sweeping the industry, Zuckerberg has made significant investments in Meta’s data centres and processing capacity. Other long-term initiatives have also advanced for the company, such as the Orion augmented reality glasses, which it unveiled last month.
Owning a 13% share in the Menlo Park, California-based corporation, Zuckerberg has witnessed the largest increase in his fortune this year, totalling $78 billion, out of all the 500 richest persons in the world as measured by the Bloomberg index.
This year, the forty-year-old co-founder and CEO has moved up four ranks in the wealth index.
