How much money does Mark Zuckerberg make a second?

After Meta (NASDAQ: META) stock surged and broke the biggest single-day gain record in market history, Mark Zuckerberg, its CEO and co-founder, became even richer. In fact, the spike added $28 billion to the net worth of the world’s fourth-richest person. The introduced dividends alone should provide Zuckerberg with $700 million each year. This begs the question: how much money does Mark Zuckerberg make a second?

Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth

As of February 2024, Zuckerberg’s total net worth amounts to a whopping $170.4 billion (as of February 26, 2024), according to “The World’s Real-Time Billionaires” index by Forbes. Although his annual salary as the CEO of Facebook’s parent conglomerate is only $1, the majority of his income comes from a significant stake in the company.

Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth is closely related to Meta’s performance, which is reflected in the fact that his net worth rose $28 billion from a January 2024 record of less than $139 billion in a matter of days, which is nearly 17% of his total wealth. The company’s recent solid financials and the introduction of dividends, coupled with a traditionally vital position in the information technology and artificial intelligence sectors, have contributed significantly to the billionaire’s fortunes.

Sources of income

Almost the entirety of Zuckerberg’s income comes from his shares in Meta Platforms. Since these shares did not provide passive income in the form of dividend payments until this month, Mark Zuckerberg has been selling a portion of his shares on a fixed schedule. However, Meta has introduced dividends, with the first payment scheduled to arrive at the end of March 2024. 

As of January 2024, he holds 349,200,895 shares of Meta, which is 13.6% of the company’s commonly held stock. In other words, he won’t go short any time soon.

And as long as Meta continues to perform well in its domains, Zuckerberg will remain among the world’s wealthiest people. As widespread doubt in the Metaverse project lowered the individual stock price to below $90 in November 2022, five quarters later, that value rose to $450, which is a stunning 500% increase in value. 

Meta Platforms’ fiscal status at the end of 2023 showed a brilliant outcome, with the company’s quarterly revenue jumping 25%, fueled by its reinvigorated advertising efforts. Furthermore, Meta has invested quite a lot in artificial intelligence, a prosperous industry that will likely yield even better results in 2024. 

The methodology

To determine Mark Zuckerberg’s earnings per second, we first need to calculate his share of Meta’s profits. We are going to do this by multiplying the percentage of his ownership of the company with the profits the company made last year. This number will then be divided across weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. 

How much does Mark Zuckerberg make a second?

Meta reported that profits for 2023 amounted to $108.94 billion. As Mark Zuckerberg owns 13.6% of the company, his share of the profits in 2023 was $14.82 billion.

To represent how much of the sum Zuckerberg earned each second, we need to divide the 2023 sum ($14.82 billion) by the number of seconds in a year (31,536,000). 

The numbers are precise: Mark Zuckerberg makes approximately $469.94 per second based on the calculation and methodology above. This equals $28,196.35 per minute, $1,691,781 per hour, $40,602,740 per day, and $284,219,178 per week. 

Comparison to other billionaires

In the pantheon of the world’s richest, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth is arguably enviable. However, he is still below some even bigger names, such as:

Trailing closely behind Zuckerberg are:

The bottom line

Mark Zuckerberg’s solid leadership over Meta has brought fortunes to both the company and him. Due to the company’s stellar success and surge in stock price, Zuckerberg skipped several positions in less than a year, going from #10 in September 2023 to the remarkable #4 on the Forbes list.

Given the company’s expansion into the artificial intelligence sector and its dominance in the social media industry, Meta and its CEO are likely to remain at the helm of the world of commerce. And given how much Mark Zuckerberg makes per second, it is clear how much valuable every second is for the “father of Facebook.”