Mashable: Zuckerberg, now 38, was valued at $106 billion and one of just a handful of global billionaires less than two years ago.

Mark Zuckerberg has paid a heavy price for his choice to shift his attention to the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, lost the most fortune of any billionaire on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index this year, a total of $71 billion.

Zuckerberg, now 38, was valued at $106 billion and was one of just a handful of global billionaires less than two years ago, ranking behind only Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. His net worth peaked at $142 billion when the stock price of the corporation reached $382 in September 2021.

In October of last year, Zuckerberg unveiled Meta and changed Facebook Inc. to just Facebook. According to the report, the company's fortunes have subsequently plummeted. When Facebook announced in February that its monthly user base had not grown, the stock price plummeted and the CEO's fortune dropped by $31 billion.

The fortune lost by the CEO of Meta stands out even in a bad year for American IT giants. This is the worst annual decline of any of the world's ultra-wealthy individuals included in Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. His net worth is $55.9 billion, putting him at #20 on the list of global billionaires, his lowest position since 2014. He is now below three Waltons and two members of the Koch family.

According to a senior internet analyst at Needham & Co., the company's investments in the metaverse are also weighing on the stock. Zuckerberg has said that he thinks the project will lose "substantial" amounts of money over the next three to five years.

Mandeep Singh, a technology analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, has speculated that Facebook "would be more in line with where Alphabet is" if not for its foray into virtual reality. He speculated that Meta may get around this problem by breaking out some of its other operations, such as WhatsApp or Instagram.

Zuckerberg has almost all of his capital invested in Meta. According to the most recent proxy filing, he owns more than 350 million shares.