Mark Zuckerberg‘s net worth surged by more than $13 billion on Friday as Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) shares extended their strong rebound. He ended the week with an estimated net worth of $237 billion, an increase of about $4 billion since the start of the year.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Net Worth is Soaring
Zuckerberg is now the world’s fifth-richest person, trailing only Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos.
Meta Platforms, the owner of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has jumped in the past few days, moving from $540 earlier this month to $669 today.
The stock jumped after Bloomberg reported that it was considering selling its extra computing power in its data centers. If successful, the company will be able to make billions of dollars from its existing data centers.
One reason for this is that its AI bets, including Meta AI, have not been all that successful. Estimates are that the product has a market share of less than 5%. The biggest names in the industry are chatbots like Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT.
Meta Platforms is also rising ahead of the upcoming in-house chip launch. It expects to launch its chip, made in collaboration with Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) in September. It hopes to deploy 1 gigawatt of custom AI chips over time.
The company has also made some major announcements. It released Muse Image last Tuesday, followed by Muse Spark 1.1, which is aimed at running agent and coding workloads. Zuckerberg aims that these models will help it compete with other top models like Claude and ChatGPT.
Analysts are Bullish on Meta Stock Price
Wall Street analysts tracking the company are largely optimistic about its business and valuation. The consensus target among analysts is $827, much higher than the current $669. The most bullish one is Rosenblatt, which has a target of $1,015.
In addition to its performance, data shows that the company has become a bargain, with its forward price-to-earnings ratio of 20 being lower than the five-year average of 22.
The stock will next react to the upcoming earnings report on July 29. The average estimate among analysts is that its revenue jumped by 26.75% in the quarter to $60.23 billion.
These earnings will let Zuckerberg and the team share more details about its capital expenditure and AI strategy. In its last earnings report, Meta boosted its capex plan to $145 billion from the previous $125 billion. A plan to slow its spending will likely be bullish for the shares.
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