Mark Zuckerberg’s Net Worth Drops as Meta’s AI Plan Spooks Investors

Mark Zuckerberg's net worth plummeted by $29.2 billion in a single day on October 30, 2025—the fourth-largest one-day market-driven decline ever tracked by Bloomberg's Billionaires Index—as Meta Platforms Inc. unveiled ambitious AI spending plans that rattled investors. The drop, triggered by an 11% plunge in Meta's shares—the steepest since 2022—came after the company announced a record $30 billion investment-grade bond sale to fuel artificial intelligence research and infrastructure. Despite a robust year-to-date gain of 28% that had previously added $57 billion to Zuckerberg's fortune, the revelation of escalating capital expenditures overshadowed Meta's third-quarter earnings, which, while beating revenue estimates at $40.6 billion, highlighted aggressive future outlays projected to exceed $65 billion in 2025 alone for AI-driven data centres and computing power.

The market's reaction reflects broader anxieties in the tech sector over the sustainability of ballooning AI investments amid uncertain returns, even as demand for generative technologies surges. Meta's disclosure, part of a wave of Big Tech earnings reports, contrasted sharply with peers' performances; Alphabet Inc., for instance, saw its shares rise 2.5% post-earnings, buoyed by cloud revenue of $11.4 billion—surpassing forecasts—and robust AI service adoption, which propelled co-founder Larry Page's wealth upward. This juxtaposition amplified the sell-off in Meta, where analysts questioned the timeline for monetising AI tools like Llama models and Meta AI assistants, amid whispers of a potential "AI bubble" echoing the dot-com era's excesses.

Zuckerberg's tumble reshuffled the elite ranks of global wealth, relegating him to fifth place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index—the lowest in nearly two years—and allowing Amazon.com Inc.'s Jeff Bezos and Page to reclaim spots among the top four, a feat not seen since October 2023. Elon Musk retained the top spot with an estimated $421 billion, bolstered by Tesla's EV momentum, while Bernard Arnault and Warren Buffett held steady in second and third. The index, which tracks 500 of the world's wealthiest individuals daily based on stock prices and asset valuations, underscores how volatile tech equities can eclipse even the most entrenched fortunes overnight, with Zuckerberg's prior ascent having briefly narrowed the gap to Musk to under $100 billion earlier in 2025.

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As Meta pushes forward with its AI pivot—aiming to integrate advanced capabilities across its 3.3 billion daily users on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—the episode highlights the high-stakes gamble in Silicon Valley's race for supremacy. Investors, spooked by the debt issuance's implications for margins and free cash flow, await clearer signals on AI's path to profitability, including potential advertising enhancements and metaverse synergies. For Zuckerberg, whose 13% stake in Meta ties his wealth directly to its fortunes, the setback serves as a reminder of the sector's cyclical nature, even as the company's long-term vision promises to redefine social connectivity in an AI-augmented world.

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