At the Meta Connect developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg, head of Facebook's Meta group, shows off the prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses.
Andre Sokolow | Image Alliance | Getty Images
dead CEO Mark Zuckerberg has surpassed Jeff Bezos to become the second richest person in the world.
Zuckerberg's net worth reached $206.2 billion on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, surpassing the CEO and former Amazon CEO's net worth of $205.1 billion. The index showed that the Facebook co-founder now trails Tesla CEO Elon Musk by about $50 billion.
With his 13% stake in Meta, Zuckerberg's net worth has risen by $78 billion since the beginning of the year, more than any member of the 500 richest people tracked by the Bloomberg Index. Meta shares closed at a record high Thursday at $582.77, representing a nearly 68% jump from early January when its shares traded at $346.29.
Zuckerberg's rise to second place on the index on Thursday highlights how his personal wealth has grown alongside investor excitement about the social media giant's rising profits this year.
Wall Street has consistently cheered Meta throughout 2024 as the company has consistently reported quarterly earnings that beat analyst estimates. In July, Meta said its second-quarter sales grew 22% to $39.07 billion, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth exceeding 20%.
Meta cited its heavy investment in artificial intelligence as helping to improve the performance 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 introduced a privacy update to iOS that weakened its ability to track users across the web. Meta said in February 2022 that the privacy changes would cost it $10 billion in revenue.
In late 2022, Zuckerberg instituted a major cost-cutting plan that extended into the following year and ultimately resulted in 21,000 Meta workers losing their jobs, or nearly a quarter of the company's workforce.
Investors reacted favorably to Meta's cost cuts while the company's online advertising business began to rebound and was boosted by massive digital ad spending campaigns by China-linked retailers Timo and Shen.
While Meta has continued to spend billions of dollars on virtual and augmented reality technologies needed to support the future concept of the Metaverse, investors have become more forgiving of investments as long as the company's core advertising business remains intact.
Last week, Meta debuted its Orion AR glasses, which received positive reviews from a few people who tested the prototype.
Watch: CNBC reviews the prototype of Meta's Orion AR glasses
