Mark Zuckerberg Lost $70 Billion in 2022

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth drop by roughly $70 million in 2022, knocking him down to 20th in the world’s richest people rankings.

The 38-year-old started that year with a net worth estimated at $125 billion, according to reports.

Since January, however, it has fallen to $55.3 billion, a loss of over 55%.

The drop comes as Meta continues to push its rebrand into a “metaverse” company, the report noted.

Following the October 2021 rebranding, the company, which owns platforms including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, reported a user decline for the first time ever.

Another controversy linking Instagram to depression and eating disorders in teenage girls also damaged the brand, according to the report.

In total, Meta’s net income dropped to $3 billion, a fall of 36%, in the second quarter when measured from the same period in 2021.

“The metaverse business for us isn’t really going to be a meaningful contributor to the business until, at a minimum, much later in this decade, and probably realistically, this decade is going to be about setting the foundation for that and then the 2030s are really where this is going to contribute a lot to the profits of this company,” Zuckerberg said at May’s annual shareholder meeting.

Meta has tried to compete with TikTok’s rise in short video clips by pushing Reels, its own video service on both Instagram and Facebook. However some online influencers, like Kylie Jenner, dislike the changes Zuckerberg and his team are implementing.

In July, Meta reported its first ever quarterly decline in revenue from the previous year, after reporting its first decline in daily Facebook users. 

Zuckerberg’s drop in wealth doesn’t seem to have completely discouraged him about the metaverse. In his nearly three-hour appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience in August, Zuckerberg said he thought that the metaverse would probably be “a lot healthier” for people—reiterating his belief that it’s the next generation of the internet.

“My goal for these next set of platforms, they are going to be more immersive, and hopefully they’ll be more useful—but I don’t necessarily want people to spend more time with computers,” he told Rogan. “I just want the time that people spend with screens to be better.”