Segun Akanni, Toronto, Canada 
Mark Zuckerberg drops out of the top 10 richest people for the first time since 2015.
Like most Silicon Valley barons, Mark Zuckerberg is above all a “paper billionaire”. As long as he has not sold his shares, his fortune remains virtual and may experience significant fluctuations. Illustration this Thursday: with the dropout of the title Meta, which unscrewed by 26% on Wall Street after presenting declining results, the net worth of Mark Zuckerberg has melted by 30 billion dollars.
For the first time since 2015, the leader dropped out of the top 10 of the Forbes ranking of the richest people. With a fortune estimated at 85 billion dollars, he currently evolves in 12th position, just ahead of the Bettencourt family, and very far behind Elon Musk (234 billion dollars). And the turbulence is probably not over.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is under attack from all sides. The social network lost users for the first time in its history last quarter, and its quarterly profits fell 8% year on year. Competition from TikTok, iOS restrictions on user tracking, lacklustre monetization of Instagram Reels… The factors are multiple. And Wall Street only seems to realize that 98% of Meta’s revenue comes from advertising.
Aware of these risks – not to mention the threats of regulation from the American authorities – Mark Zuckerberg has tried a gamble: bet everything on the metaverse, which he sees as the future of the Internet, where virtual reality (VR) headsets and augmented reality (AR) glasses will replace the screens of our computers and smartphones, for an ultra-immersive Web.
Facebook Reality Labs, its AR/VR division, lost $10 billion in 2021. With annual profit still flirting with $40 billion, and nearly $50 billion in available cash, Facebook has plenty to do. And despite Wall Street’s doubts and calls to hand over, Mark Zuckerberg remains master of his destiny: he controls more than half of the votes on Meta’s Board of Directors.
