Mark Zuckerberg slips to world’s 5th richest after losing $29B in one day

By Hien Nguyen October 31, 2025 | 01:49 am PT

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, U.S., Jan. 31, 2024. Photo by Reuters

Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune plunged by US$29.2 billion on Thursday as Meta shares tumbled, pushing him behind Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Alphabet's Larry Page to fifth place among the world’s richest.

Meta shares tumbled 12.3% to about $658.50 after the market opened on Thursday, marking their steepest intraday drop since October 2022. The stock eventually closed the session 11% lower, tanking Zuckerberg’s wealth.

The drop was the fourth-largest single-day loss of net worth ever recorded on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Forbes now estimates the Meta CEO’s net worth at $228.5 billion, trailing Page’s $232.2 billion and Bezos’ $235.4 billion.

Meta reported third-quarter earnings per share of $1.05 on Wednesday, far below the $6.72 projected by economists, according to FactSet, even as its revenue of $51.2 billion surpassed prior estimates of $49.5 billion.

The 83% year-on-year drop from $6.03 a share was largely due to a one-time tax charge of $15.9 billion linked to U.S. President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Meta said.

The company noted that it expects a "significant reduction" in U.S. federal cash tax payments for the remainder of 2025 and upcoming years. It said earnings per share would have reached $7.25 without the charge.

Meta has been pouring money into attracting and retaining top artificial intelligence talent as competition among major tech firms intensifies, according to Reuters.

Under Zuckerberg’s direction, it recently launched an aggressive hiring campaign to support its new AI unit, Superintelligence Labs.

On Thursday, it announced plans for its largest-ever bond sale of up to $30 billion to help fund its ambitions in the field. Before the selloff, Meta’s shares had climbed 28% this year, but investor concerns over its surging AI budget triggered caution.

The company said it expects to spend as much as $118 billion in capital expenditures in 2025 and potentially more in 2026, prompting at least two analysts to downgrade the stock, as reported by Bloomberg.

Zuckerberg owns a roughly 13% stake in Meta, which was rebranded from Facebook in 2021 in a pivot toward building the metaverse.

He dropped out of Harvard to launch the social media platform in 2004 and took the firm public in 2012.

Before the recent drop, he was the third richest man in the world, behind only Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Tesla’s Elon Musk, whose net worths are at $313.3 billion and $488.1 billion, respectively.