Zuckerberg drops out of 10 richest men in US

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg has lost his spot in the list as one of the 10 richest people in America following loss of more than half of his fortune.

The Meta chief executive officer has lost $76.8 billion since September 2021 dropping him from No.3 to No.11 according to Forbes 400 list of wealthiest people in the United States.

No one in America has lost as much money over the past year as Zuckerberg.

He has the cratering stock price of Meta (formerly Facebook) to thank for his exit from the top 10.

Shares have plunged 57% since last year’s Forbes 400, which used stock prices from September 3, 2021.

Investors are spooked by a privacy policy update from Apple last year that made it harder for tech companies to track users across apps, impacting Meta’s ad sales. Meta reported its first-ever quarterly revenue decline in July–a 1% drop, to $28.8 billion.

Compounding the problem for Meta, TikTok is luring away advertisers, along with lucrative Gen Z and millennial users. Under normal circumstances, a slight dip in revenue might be manageable, but Meta is also investing heavily in virtual reality and the metaverse, which is dragging down operating profit.

In 2021, the company’s metaverse division, Meta Reality Labs, lost $10 billion.

This year isn’t the first time Zuckerberg’s net worth has taken a dive. After Facebook’s famously disappointing IPO in 2012, Zuckerberg fell from No. 14 to No. 36 on The Forbes 400. But it didn’t last long. The following year, Zuckerberg bounced back and, up until now, his fortune has continued to climb.