At the Meta Connect developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg, head of the Facebook group Meta, shows the prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has surpassed Jeff Bezos as the world’s second richest person.
Zuckerberg’s net worth reached $206.2 billion on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, topping the $205.1 billion net worth of the former Amazon CEO and president. The Facebook co-founder now trails Tesla chief Elon Musk by roughly $50 billion, the index showed.
With his 13% stake in Meta, Zuckerberg’s net-worth has risen by $78 billion since the beginning of the year, which is more than any member of the of the 500 richest people that the Bloomberg Index tracks. Meta shares closed at a record high on Thursday at $582.77, representing a roughly 68% jump from early January when its shares were trading at $346.29.
Zuckerberg’s rise to the second spot on the index on Thursday underscores how his personal wealth has grown alongside investor enthusiasm over the social media giant’s rising profits this year.
Wall Street has continuously cheered Meta throughout 2024 as the company has consistently reported quarterly earnings that have surpassed analyst estimates. In July, Meta said that its second-quarter sales grew 22% to $39.07 billion, marking the fourth straight quarter of revenue growth topping 20%.
Meta has pointed to its hefty artificial intelligence investments as helping improve the performance of its online advertising platform as a reason for its sales growth. The company’s online advertising system suffered a major setback in 2021 when Apple introduced an iOS privacy update that weakened its ability to track users across the web. Meta in February 2022 said that the privacy changes would cost it $10 billion in revenue.
In late 2022, Zuckerberg instituted a major cost-cutting plan that extended into the next year and ultimately resulted in 21,000 Meta workers losing their jobs, or roughly a quarter of the company’s workforce.
Investors reacted favorably to Meta’s cost cutting while the company’s online advertising business began to rebound and was bolstered by the massive digital ad spending campaigns by Chinese-linked retailers Temu and Shien.
While Meta has continued spending billions of dollars on the virtual and augmented reality technologies needed to underpin the futuristic concept of the metaverse, investors have become more tolerant of the investments as long as the company’s core ad business remains healthy.
Last week, Meta debuted its Orion AR glasses, which garnered positive reviews from the few people who have tested the prototype.
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk gestures behind protective glass during a rally for Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump, at the site of the July assassination attempt against Trump, in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a meagdonor and adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, is now seeking to influence Germany’s election, posting an endorsement on X of the country’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
In a post Thursday night, Musk wrote, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
Musk, who has over 200 million listed followers on the site that he owns, made the comment while sharing a post from far-right influencer, Naomi Seibt, who claimed that Germany’s “presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example,” referring to the president of Argentina.
Seibt has a history of promoting white nationalist ideology, The Guardian previously reported, and has denied the validity of scientific consensus around climate change, namely that it’s driven by fossil fuel emissions.
In a post on X, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called Musk an “out of touch billionaire running the incoming Trump Administration” who “enthusiastically supports the neo-Nazi party in Germany.”
“The AfD’s mission is to rehabilitate the image of the Nazi movement,” Murphy wrote. He added that one of the party’s leaders has a license plate that’s “an open tribute to Hitler,” and another “described Judaism as the ‘inner enemy’ in Germany.”
Musk and Tesla’s investor relations team didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Friday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a center-left Social Democrat, dismissed Musk’s claim that only the far-right party can “save Germany.”
Under Scholz’s leadership, Germany‘s left-wing coalition collapsed in November, and AfD is currently polling in second place ahead of February elections. Throughout Germany, where the AfD has placed highly in state elections, the other parties have generally refused to form coalitions with it.
Far right parties have also gained ground in the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and elsewhere. Many cheered Trump’s election, which Musk helped finance through $277 million in contributions to the campaign and related Republican causes.
Tesla’s stock is up about 75% since Trump’s victory, surpassing its prior all-time high from 2021 last week.
AfD has reportedly criticized Tesla and its factory outside of Berlin. The party claimed many of Tesla’s thousands of workers there commute in from Poland or Berlin, limiting the economic benefits to the local community in Brandeburg.
The AfD generally views electric vehicles as part of an ideological climate movement, and not good for Germany’s auto industry.
Europe has been a tough market for Tesla this year. According to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, sales of Tesla cars declined 40.9% in November, exceeding the overall 9.5% dip in sales of battery electric vehicles.
Elsewhere in Euopre, Musk endorsed right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and has voiced support for Nigel Farage in the U.K, a populist politician and head of Reform UK. In South America, Musk endorsed and has a friendship with Argentina’s President Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist.
Bitcoin dipped below the $93,000 mark earlier in the day before trading above that price in volatile trade.
By around 8:26 ET, bitcoin was trading at $93,809.39, according to Coin Metrics, down around 8% from 24 hours before when it was priced above $102,000.
The cryptocurrency hit an all-time high above $108,000 just this week, but has since sold off aggressively.
The Federal Reserve rattled markets in recent days, as it signaled fewer interest rate cuts next year. Equity markets took a hit, filtering through to crypto assets.
The price of bitcoin price has more than doubled this year, supported by a number of factors including the launch of spot exchange-traded funds and the U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump. He has pledged pro-crypto policies and his victory at the polls helped propel bitcoin to its latest record high.
With some markets on edge due to the Fed, some of the steam has come out of assets that have seen big gains this year.
Tesla, which has been another big beneficiary of Trump’s win, continued its post-election slide with shares falling on Friday in premarket trade. Other big names like Nvidia were also lower during the session.
Bitcoin’s fall also dragged down other cryptocurrencies. Ether was down around 12%, and XRP plunged 10% from 24 hours prior, at around 8:27 a.m. ET.
Tesla electric vehicles are parked in a parking lot at the Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg plant.
Patrick Pleul | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Shares of Tesla continued to slide on Friday, in what appeared to be a case of investors taking profits from the electric car maker’s blistering post-U.S. election rally.
As of around 6:30 a.m. ET, the firm’s shares were down nearly 5% in U.S. premarket trading, extending losses from earlier in the week. On Wednesday, Tesla shares slumped 8% to post their worst day since before Donald Trump’s presidential election victory in November.
Trump’s win prompted a sharp rally in Tesla shares, as investors increased their bets that the electric vehicle firm would benefit thanks to its CEO Elon Musk’s close ties to the president-elect. The stock is still up around 65% since Nov. 5’s market close — the night of the U.S. presidential vote.
Musk was appointed by Trump to co-lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, also referred to as “DOGE.” The proposed presidential advisory commission’s acronym shares the same name as the internet meme that inspired so-called “memecoin” cryptocurrency, dogecoin.
Musk was a major backer of Trump during the Republican’s election run, pouring in $277 million primarily into his campaign effort, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Musk is the world’s richest person, with a net worth of $439.4 billion, according to Forbes data.
Last month, Bloomberg News reported Trump’s transition team was planning to pursue a federal framework for regulating self-driving vehicles.
Tesla and Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment on the report.
If true, the move would offer a major boost to Musk’s EV firm. Tesla is staking its future on the idea of rolling out mass fleets of autonomous vehicles, known as “robotaxi” services. At the firm’s “We Robot” event in October, Musk unveiled the firm’s Cybercab self-driving concept car.
In other Tesla-related news, data released by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association on Thursday showed sales of Tesla cars declined 40.9% in November, exceeding the overall 9.5% dip in sales of battery electric cars (BEVs) in the bloc.
Separately, Tesla also on Friday said it was recalling nearly 700,000 vehicles in the U.S. due to an issue with its tire pressure monitoring system. Software-related recalls aren’t typically a huge issue for Tesla, however, as it can issue “over-the-air” updates to fix these issues.