Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg joins centibillionaire club
The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune has passed $100bn (£76bn) for the first time, adding him to an exclusive club of the world’s centibillionaires.
Facebook announced the US rollout of Instagram Reels, its answer to the Chinese app TikTok, as the US president, Donald Trump, issued bans on American companies transacting with its parent company, ByteDance, and Tencent, which owns the WeChat messaging service.
Zuckerberg owns a 13% stake in Facebook and his net worth passed $100bn as shares in the social network surged by 6% on investor optimism over the prospects of the TikTok rival.
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The 36-year old joins the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, as the only people who have centibillionaire status, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Daily Times reports that this came after Facebook’s shares surged on news it is to launch a rival to the video-sharing app TikTok.
There has been a surge in usage for technology companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook as the public has turned online while under lockdown conditions during the coronavirus pandemic.
Zuckerberg’s net worth has risen by about $22bn this year, while Bezos’s fortune has jumped by more than $75bn. Apple could hit a valuation of $2tn in trading on Friday, the first US company to reach such a milestone.
