New Delhi: Meta’s stock crash on Thursday led to a whopping loss to its founder Mark Zuckerberg as he lost $29 billion in net worth, according to a report in Reuters.
The stock of Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook, on Thursday marked a record one-day plunge.
Zuckerberg’s one-day wealth loss is among the biggest ever as of now.
Another billionaire Jeff Bezos, however, was set to add $20 billion to his personal valuation following blockbuster earnings in Amazon Inc.
Stock of Meta tanked 26 per cent, erasing over $200 billion in the biggest ever single-day market value wipeout for a US firm.
Quoting Forbes, Reuters reported that the stock crash has pulled down Chief Executive Officer Zuckerberg’s net worth to $85 billion. Zuckerberg owns about 12.8 per cent in Meta.
Founder and Chairman of e-commerce giant Amazon Jeff Bezos owns around 9.9 per cent of the company, according to Refinitiv data. Bezos is also the world’s third richest man, Forbes said.
The reason behind the surge in Amazon’s holiday-quarterly profit is because of its investments in electric vehicle company Rivian. The company said it would hike annual prices of Prime subscriptions in the United States, sending its shares up 15 per cent in extended trading and readying it for its biggest percentage gain since October 2009 on Friday.
Bezos’ net worth rose 57 per cent to $177 billion in 2021 from a year earlier, according to Forbes, largely from Amazon’s boom during the pandemic when people were highly dependent on online shopping.
Before Zuckerberg, world’s richest person and Tesla CEO Elon Musk had witnessed $35 billion single-day paper loss in November last year. Musk had then polled Twitter users if he should sell 10 per cent of his stake in the electric carmaker. Tesla shares have yet to recover from the resulting selloff.
Following the $29 billion wipeout, Zuckerberg is in the 12th spot on Forbes’ list of real-time billionaires, below Indian business moguls Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani.
Zuckerberg sold $4.47 billion worth of Meta shares last year, before 2021’s tech rout. The stock sales were carried out as part of a pre-set 10b5-1 trading plan, which executives use to allay concerns about insider trading.
To be sure, trading in technology stocks remains volatile as investors struggle to price in the impact of high inflation and an expected rise in interest rates.