Facebook CEO, Zuckerberg Becomes World’s Third Centibillionaire As Fortune Exceeds $100billion
Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has become world’s third centibillionaire after his personal wealth rose to $100billion.
According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the 36-year-old has now joined Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates in the centibillionaire’s club.
This comes after Facebook’s shares surged by 6% after the company launched Instagram Reels, a rival app to the embattled Chinese video-sharing application TikTok.
Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump banned US companies from dealing with ByteDance and Tencent – the Chinese owners of TikTok and the WeChat messaging service.
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Instagram, which is a sister company to Facebook, in a blog post said;
Instagram Reels invites users to create fun videos to share with your friends or anyone on Instagram. Record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects, and new creative tools.
The media magnate has joined Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, as the only people who have centibillionaire status, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index said.
Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook as an Harvard student in 2004, owns a 13% stake in the company and gained about US$22 billion this year.
Notably, this growth enjoyed by tech companies and their founders is led by the effects of coronavirus pandemic, which has driven people to spend more time online.
Read Also: Jeff Bezos Added $13 Billion To His Net Worth In A Single Day
The five largest American tech companies Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft currently have market valuations equivalent to about 30 per cent of US gross domestic product, nearly double what they were at the end of 2018, according to Bloomberg.
