Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth surpassed $100 billion for the first time Friday, making him the third richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
Facebook made revenue of more than $70 billion in 2019 and has 2.7 million global monthly users.
Zuckerberg falls just behind Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who are worth $120 billion and $190 billion, respectively.
Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Google have all seen significant growth since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which forced people across the world to become dependent on technology to stay in touch with friends and family, get food and supplies delivered and work from home amid lockdown restrictions.
The companies have a combined market value of $4.9 trillion.
Facebook, specifically, reported an 11% growth in revenue – from $16.9 billion in 2019 to $18.7 billion in 2020 – despite the pandemic, beating analyst expectations of $17.34 billion, Dow Jones reported citing data from FactSet.
Revenue also grew in spite of a massive advertising boycott against Facebook that took place throughout July. The boycott called the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign – organized by the NAACP, Anti-Defamation League and other activist organizations – encouraged companies across the globe to pull ads from Facebook for a month in protest of the site’s policies against hate speech and discrimination.
Zuckerberg reportedly said during a July 1 employee town hall that his “guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough,” a transcript of the meeting obtained by The Information reads.
“We’re not gonna change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue,” he said, according to the transcript.
