Mark Zuckerberg, who now runs Meta (formerly Facebook), has a net worth of about $108 billion. Most of that comes from his holdings in Meta stock. He dropped out of Harvard to build Facebook, which he founded while still enrolled there. The rise of the social media company was famously chronicled in “The Social Network.”
Although Meta is a publicly traded company, Zuckerberg’s majority stake gives him control over its operations. His leadership has always been crucial to the direction of the business.
Meta saw its fortunes rebound in early 2023 with two straight quarters of better-than-expected financial results after six consecutive quarters of losses. It reports earnings every three months.
March 2023 was a difficult month for many at Meta. The company announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees — its second major round of job cuts this year — and an additional 5,000 job vacancies would go unfilled, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
According to Insider, which cited an analysis by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Meta’s layoffs represented a roughly 24% reduction in staff and are among the largest tech industry job cuts since it began tracking such data in 2022.
Sheryl Sandberg served as Meta’s Chief Operating Officer until June 2022; during her tenure she became known for her feminism advocacy and deft handling of several high-profile controversies.
Mark Zuckerberg Journey
Mark Zuckerberg personal story features numerous milestones and controversies alike as he went from being a Harvard dropout to the head of a multibillion-dollar corporation. His wealth is tied mostly to what happens with shares of Meta.
Mark Zuckerberg also has become quite the family man. He met his wife Priscilla Chan while they were both students at Harvard; they married in 2012. She now leads their philanthropic arm, the Chan Mark Zuckerberg Initiative. They have three daughters: Maxima (7 years old), August (5) and Aurelia (born March 2023). The girls’ names are inspired by Roman emperors, reflecting their dad’s interest in that era.
Facebook is Meta’s flagship brand, but there are other big-name platforms under its umbrella, including WhatsApp and Instagram. WhatsApp is a global messaging app that’s less popular in the U.S., while Instagram is a photo- and video-sharing service with more than a billion users that has become an essential tool for businesses and influencers.
But Facebook isn’t all Meta does: The company also owns or operates other apps such as Threads and Horizon Metaverse, as well as virtual reality hardware such as Oculus headsets.
To smooth out financial transactions across its various services, Meta Pay was introduced. The play of many different apps off one another along with periodic advancements in virtual reality technology shows how serious the company is about bringing people together digitally.
As long as Mark Zuckerberg remains at the helm of Meta, the company will have to find ways to navigate both its successes and failures while shaping what comes next for social media in general and VR specifically.
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