Zuckerberg Falls Off List of Top Ten Wealthiest Americans

 

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped from the top ten richest people in America list.

Zuckerberg had consistently been on the Forbes list since 2015, but has lost more money in the past year than any other American.

Forbes reports, “Zuckerberg has lost more than half his fortune—a staggering $76.8 billion—since September 2021, dropping him from No. 3 on The Forbes 400 list of the U.S.’ wealthiest people to No. 11. Worth $57.7 billion on this year’s list, which used stock prices from September 2.

Zuckerberg now trails Walmart heir Jim Walton, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and other tech moguls such as ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, according to the report. 

The biggest blow to Zuckerberg’s wallet came from the stock price of Meta plummeting 57 percent since last year.

“Tech stocks are generally in a slump with the market downturn, but Meta’s fall outpaces both the Nasdaq (-9.8%) and the S&P 500 (-13.5%), as well as Microsoft’s 14% decline, Google-parent Alphabet‘s 25% drop and Amazon’s 27% dive,” the report explains.

Facebook made most of its money from advertising, but that took a massive hit when Apple made it harder for companies to track users outside of their own app.

“Facebook makes most of its money from advertising, and now it just doesn’t have that data anymore,” Mark Zgutowicz, an analyst at research and investment banking firm Benchmark, told Forbes. “All those data signals went away, which basically means that advertisers are having trouble telling whether a campaign was successful or not.”

The platform has also lost many advertisers to TikTok, which reaches a younger audience.

Zuckerberg hit billionaire status in 2008, when he was just 23 years old.