Mark Zuckerberg
FOUNDER / CHAIRMAN / CEO
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (/ˈzʌkərbɜːrɡ/; born May 14, 1984) is an American media magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder. Zuckerberg attended Harvard University, where he launched Facebook in February 2004 with his roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Originally launched to select college campuses, the site expanded rapidly and eventually beyond colleges, reaching one billion users by 2012. Zuckerberg took the company public in May 2012 with majority shares. In 2007, at age 23, he became the world's youngest self-made billionaire. As of March 2022, Zuckerberg's net worth was $74.5 billion according to the Forbes' Real Time Billionaires.
Since 2008, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 most influential people in the world as a part of its Person of the Year award, which he was recognized with in 2010. In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked tenth on Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People.
When Zuckerberg signaled in October 2021 that he was considering renaming his company to reflect a new focus on the metaverse, it was hard not to read it as a desperate attempt to turn the page after a year of nonstop scrutiny here and abroad concerning mounting evidence that his ubiquitous platforms were vehicles for election interference and misinformation. In the meantime, the valuation of newly-dubbed Meta, which he cofounded in 2004, hit $1 trillion in 2021, while his personal net worth grew to $126.5 billion. Facebook and Instagram were slow to cut users in on the ad profits their videos generated, but Zuckerberg is making up for lost time with an initiative that’s set to pay out $1 billion to its content creators through 2022.