Mark Zuckerberg Joins Elite $200 Billion Club as Meta's AI Push Pays Off

Mark Zuckerberg is now worth $200 billion, putting the Meta CEO in the world's most exclusive club

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. Bezos has rejoined the uber-exclusive group this year thanks to a $39 billion surge in his net worth to $216 billion. Amazon shares have jumped about 28% in 2024 to trade at near-record levels of over $190. Musk started the year with a $229 billion fortune, which has surged by $36 billion in under nine months to $265 billion at Monday's close. The only other person worth $200 billion at the beginning of this year was LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault. However, shares of his luxury conglomerate have slid by almost 16% this year, slashing his estimated wealth by $30 billion to $177 billion. Arnault has tumbled into fifth place behind Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, who's added north of $55 billion to his fortune this year thanks to his company's stock leaping 57%. Both Arnault and Ellison are more than $20 billion away from $200 billion status, suggesting they won't join the club for a while yet. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Ellison have all benefited greatly from the fervor around artificial intelligence. Investors are betting heavily that Tesla can harness AI to power its self-driving cars and humanoid robots; Amazon can use it to supercharge its cloud services and e-commerce profits; Meta can take social media and digital communication to the next level with it; and Oracle can make a fortune by renting out capacity in its AI data centers. The wider stock market has also received a boost this month from the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates for the first time after hiking them from nearly zero to over 5% in under 18 months. Lower rates tend to boost economic growth by fueling more spending, hiring, and borrowing, and also buoy stocks by making safer assets like cash and bonds less appealing to investors.

Mark Zuckerberg is now in an exclusive club with only two other members: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos

But now there's an even more illustrious camp: The $200 billion club. And only three of tech's biggest leaders have reached that summit: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and now, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg, however, not only just broke into the $200 billion club -- he's also the biggest winner on the list having accumulated dozens of billions in wealth this year. Zuckerberg's wealth has ballooned by an incredible $72.2 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, bringing his total net worth to $200 billion. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has had the second-biggest jump in net worth this year, gaining $58 billion in wealth. Growth aside, Musk has the highest net worth with $265 billion to his name, with Bezos tracking behind him at $216 billion. This places Zuckerberg ahead of other major tech executives including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. "I define our strategy as if we can learn faster than every other company, we're going to win," Zuckerberg said during a taping of the Acquired podcast last week. "We're going to build a better product than everyone else because we're going to get it out first or early. You learn faster." While Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook 20 years ago, only takes a $1 salary, he makes up for it in "other compensation" and his massive stake in Meta. He's the largest shareholder of Facebook's parent company, owning about 345.5 million shares, according to Meta's April proxy statement. Plus, he took home $24.4 million in "other compensation" this year. Much of that other compensation goes toward protecting Zuckerberg, much like other high-profile CEOs. "We believe that Mr. Zuckerberg's role puts him in a unique position: he is synonymous with Meta and, as a result, negative sentiment regarding our company is directly associated with, and often transferred to, Mr. Zuckerberg," Meta wrote in the SEC filing. Meta did not respond to Fortune's request for comment regarding Zuckerberg's net worth. Meta, which owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, has performed well this year. Since the start of 2024, Meta's stock is up a jarring 60%, and an even more impressive 85% year-over-year. It opened trade at more than $557 per share on Tuesday. Zuckerberg credits the company's focus on AI with Meta's strong performance this year. "Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year," Zuckerberg said in an earnings statement in July. Indeed, revenue rose 22% to $39.07 billion from $32 billion in Q2. While AI has been a boon for the company, Zuckerberg's "Year of Efficiency" at Meta has been a challenge for many of its other workers and for some of its biggest projects, including augmented reality. This cost-cutting initiative started in February 2023 and has resulted in mass layoffs from the tech giant. "This decision is part of our larger efforts to prioritize the products we believe will best serve the future needs of our consumers and business customers alike," Meta said in a statement.