Tech entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg, now the world's fourth-richest billionaire with a net worth of $201 billion, rebranded Facebook to Meta in October 2021 and expanded into metaverse hardware and artificial intelligence.
At the time of writing, tech giant Meta is currently trading at approximately $567 per share, representing a more than 6x increase from the stock’s low of approximately $88 per share in November 2022. Meta’s current market cap is over $1.4 trillion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.
In the year following the name change, Meta’s stock price fell sharply from a trading price of $300 to a low in November 2022, reflecting investor unease at the time about the company’s shift toward augmented reality experiences and artificial intelligence development. Since then, half of the world’s 10 most valuable companies have begun developing Metaverse hardware, including Apple, Google, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
As of September 2024, Zuckerberg's net worth is trailed only by Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and French businessman Bernard Arnault, according to Bloomberg.
Zuckerberg has previously said Meta will narrow the company's business scope and increase capital investment in artificial intelligence research to expand its business in this area.
“We have released our first cutting-edge open source AI model, and our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses continue to gain traction,” he explained during a July 31 earnings call. (Cointelegraph)