Topline
Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune added more than $22 billion Thursday, ranking him as the world’s fourth-richest person, surpassing Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as Meta’s stock rallied after once again exceeding Wall Street’s expectations for quarterly revenue.
The company reported quarterly revenue that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations.
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Key Facts
Shares of Meta surged 10.2% to above $737 as of 3:20 p.m. EST, the largest intraday jump for the stock since rising 11% in July 2025.
The company on Wednesday reported $59.8 billion in fourth-quarter revenue and $8.88 earnings per share, well above economists’ estimates of $51.2 billion and $8.21 EPS, while marking year-over-year growth of 24% and 11%, respectively.
Meta increased its capital expenditures projections for 2026, citing efforts to build out its AI products, indicating it anticipated spending between $115 billion and $135 billion this year after totaling $72.2 billion in 2025.
Forbes Valuation
Zuckerberg’s net worth swelled by $22 billion (9.7%) to $251.7 billion on Thursday, pushing him ahead of Bezos ($249.7 billion) to rank as the world’s fourth-richest person, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List. Tesla’s Elon Musk remains the world’s wealthiest person, with a net worth of $766.1 billion, far ahead of Google cofounders Larry Page ($275 billion) and Sergey Brin ($253.7 billion).
Tangent
Tesla shares dropped 3.2% on Thursday after the company reported its first full-year revenue decline ever, despite topping revenue expectations. Full-year revenue totaled $94.8 billion, down from the $97.7 billion in 2024, even as quarterly revenue was just above estimates at $24.9 billion. Shares of Microsoft, which also reported earnings alongside Tesla and Meta, plunged by 11.7% after revenue for its Azure unit slowed slightly in its latest quarter.
Key Background
The ranks of the world’s wealthiest people have shuffled in recent months. Oracle chairman Larry Ellison ranked as high as No. 2 as of September, when he became the second person ever to be worth $400 billion, before falling to No. 7 as of Thursday, as the company’s stock has steadily declined from an all-time high. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ranked No. 9 earlier this week before dropping to No. 14 after the tech giant’s shares plummeted on an earnings report marred by slowed cloud computing revenue growth. Google’s Page and Brin jumped to the top three after Alphabet emerged as a leader in the AI market late last year following the release of its Gemini 3 AI model, which was widely praised.
Further Reading
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/01/29/mark-zuckerberg-passes-jeff-bezos-for-no-4-richest-as-meta-stock-soars-on-earnings-beat/
