The current Mark Zuckerberg net worth in 2021 is $96.4 billion according to Forbes. His wealth is tied to the performance of Facebook stock as he continues to own 14% of the company he founded (400,468,705 shares) valued at $66,798,179,994 based on the public update in February 2020.
Zuckerberg had a long and interesting journey to becoming the fifth richest person in the world at the age of 37. He founded TheFacebook.com website in his dorm room at Harvard in 2004 at the age of 19. He rejected many offers to sell Facebook over the years. One was a $75 million offer by Viacom in 2006 to buy Facebook. Later in 2006, Yahoo! made an offer to buy Facebook for $1 billion and Zuckerberg turned down that offer also. That same year BusinessWeek was giving the company a $2 billion valuation.
In 2007 Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake for $240 million which put the Facebook valuation at $15 billion. After that the new Facebook valuation, the ownership that Zuckerberg still had in the the company made him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire ever at the age of 23 years old.
In 2009 a lower valued 2% ownership was sold to Digital Sky Technologies for $200 million dropping the valuation a small amount.
By 2011 the company was being valued at $50 billion according to investment reports.
Facebook had one billion worldwide users by the year 2012. Facebook was taken public on May 18, 2012 with its Initial Public Offering of stock. Mark Zuckerberg continued to hold a 22% ownership of all outstanding shares in Facebook along with owning 57% of all the voting shares. At the time the Facebook IPO was one of the biggest in the history of the tech sector and the largest initial public offering for an internet sector stock in history.
He is also a co-founder and board member of the solar sail spacecraft development project Breakthrough Starshot.
Zuckerberg and his wife promised in 2015 to donate 99% of their net wealth to charities in their lifetimes. Their money has been placed in a limited liability corporation that they both own and control. They focus their philanthropic donations to “Advancing human potential and promoting equality”.
His investment portfolio recently held $211 million invested in Panorama Education, Vicarious, AltSchool, MasteryConnect and Asana.
In 2011 Zuckerberg purchased a $7 million house in Palo Alto, California. There is speculation that Zuckerburg purchased all the homes surrounding his in 2013 for a total of $30 million through Iconiq Capital.
Mark Zuckerberg built his net worth by founding and then retaining a large percentage of ownership in Facebook and then turning it into one of the biggest companies in the world through great acquisitions like Instagram, Oculus, and What’s App. The real money maker for Facebook is the like button he introduced and the profile information users give it, with this data he has created the most targeted advertising platform in history. Facebook allows advertisers to use targeted ads for products you want to see to find you, and Facebook has monetized this.
Mark Zuckerberg has established himself as one of the top tech entrepreneurs of all time for building Facebook into one of the most successful companies in history.
