Mark Zuckerberg has nearly exclusive decision-making authority in Meta

Despite Meta's core products being social media apps, Zuckerberg is adamant that Meta is a technology company that has built social media apps, but can build and is comfortable building other technologies—like AI-integrated glasses and virtual reality labs.

During the pandemic, Zuckerberg began practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu and even won gold and silver medals at his first tournament in 2023. His interest in martial arts and water sports, like wakesurfing and hydrofoiling, prompted the company to disclose those hobbies as risks for potential investors, given they pose a threat to Zuckerberg's health and he retains a significant amount of control over Meta.

Moving beyond the controversies over fueling misinformation, division, and harm worldwide, Mark Zuckerberg expressed optimism about technology's role in connecting people. Meta's multibillion-dollar investments in integrative AR and VR technologies have further evolved its founder's vision.

In the past few decades, dual-class stock structures have become an increasingly popular way for companies to raise capital in public markets without allocating traditional shareholder voting rights. Meta, Estée Lauder, and The New York Times are companies that are famously dual-class.

Since introducing Facebook Ads in 2007, ads have become the main way Meta makes money and keeps the social media platforms free for users. Meta's targeted ad program allows businesses to set a maximum advertising budget and be charged only for the actual number of impressions an ad receives. In 2025, $196.175B of Meta's $200.966B annual revenue came from advertising.

Zuckerberg, like Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, wore the same, simple T-shirts and outfits for most of his early career to decrease the decisions he'd have to make on a daily basis. In 2024, Zuckerberg started wearing chunky gold chains around his neck and oversized T-shirts with slogans on them. Some say the "Zuckassaince" is an effort to rebrand Meta as a futuristic company, not just an old social media company for millennials.

Randi is two years older than Mark and also attended Harvard before working in advertising. Before joining Facebook, Randi worked in digital advertising at Ogilvy & Mather. In 2018, Randi attracted criticism for saying Holocaust deniers shouldn't be banned on Facebook. She's also previously been criticized for her own seemingly contradictory sentiments on Facebook's privacy rules.

Meta, back when the company was still known as Facebook, once tried and failed to launch a smartphone. With the arrival of the mixed reality era, the company decided to make another hardware play again—and this time, it's having better luck. Meta's aggressively priced Quest headsets offer VR for the masses, and here CEO Mark Zuckerberg shows off the new mixed reality experiences and more available with the latest version, the Quest 3.

Peter Thiel was Facebook's first big investor. In 2004, he invested $500K into the social network, long before the company owned Instagram or renamed itself "Meta." In 2012, when he sold off most of his stake, he turned that initial $500K investment into more than $1B in cash.

Before becoming the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman was the president of Y Combinator—a startup accelerator company that supported companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and Coinbase. In 2016, Altman interviewed Zuckerberg about creating Facebook and its growth over time. Zuckerberg said that, unlike other companies (think: CourseMatch), Facebook kept growing and adding new features, which prevented the app from becoming obsolete.

Share classes refer to specific types of company stock that are distinguished by the rights they grant, such as voting power and dividend access.

Zuckerberg testified in Congress for the first time in 2018 over Facebook's privacy violations and its failure to detect Russian interference on the app during the 2016 election. Since then, Zuckerberg has appeared a total of eight times to defend Meta against privacy violations, child safety, and more.

The CEOs of top technology companies Nvidia and Meta recently revealed their visions for the metaverse of the future. As of 2021, both Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg were bullish on virtual world-building, although Huang seemed more focused on the metaverse's business implications than its social ones, which Zuckerberg prioritized.

Zuckerberg owns a cattle ranch on Kauai, where he says his goal is to raise the best beef in the world. Zuckerberg has said that he raises Wagyu and Angus and feeds them macadamia meal and beer, both of which are produced on the cattle ranch. In January 2024, Zuckerberg said his daughter thought his full-time job was cattle ranching.

Mark Zuckerberg enrolled in Harvard in 2002 and studied computer science and psychology. He officially dropped out in 2005 to run Facebook, now Meta. When he returned to campus to officially drop out, he met with professors and students to recruit programmers for the company.

In 2006, Yahoo tried to buy Facebook for $1B. Despite enthusiasm from nearly all of Facebook's management team and board (which included PayPal cofounder and famed investor Peter Thiel at the time), then 22-year-old Zuckerberg turned down the offer, insisting that Yahoo undervalued the company and didn't have a clear vision for the future. Zuckerberg has since said he regrets not being clear about his intentions to grow the company with his team before the Yahoo bid, as almost all of the company's management team left after he turned down the offer.

In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission sued Meta as part of the agency's efforts to rein in big tech companies. The FTC alleged that Meta overpaid for Instagram and WhatsApp in a "buy or bury" strategy to gain access to those companies' talent and diminish competition. In 2025, a federal judge sided with Meta, citing intense change in the social media landscape.

The board tried to fire Mark Zuckerberg for his resistance, which he blames for failing to communicate the long-term vision of the company. He claims the company has succeeded by launching products quickly to learn faster than its competitors.

Three decades after founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos has built a sprawling empire of businesses and financial interests. Other large stakeholders in the company include Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy and Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. This article provides more details on who owns how much of Amazon.

Recent data from the Federal Reserve shows that the richest people in America own 93% of all the country's stock—the highest level ever recorded. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks.

Mark Zuckerberg received an honorary degree from Harvard when he returned to the university to give a commencement speech. In his speech, he talked about wealth, racial inequality, political instability, and creating a sense of purpose.

Zuckerberg studied Latin in high school and became interested in ancient Rome. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, went to Rome on their honeymoon. His daughters—August, Maxima, and Aurelia—are all named after Roman emperors.

The controversial "FaceMash," where students rated each other's attractiveness, was the precursor to Mark Zuckerberg's social network. The platform rebranded as Meta after several acquisitions and a push into virtual reality, distancing itself from controversies.

Mark Zuckerberg grew up in Dobbs Ferry in Westchester County, about 25 miles north of New York City. His father, Ed Zuckerberg, owned a practice connected to Mark's childhood home, but he was always fascinated by computers. Ed's family was the first in his neighborhood to have a color television, and Ed was an early adopter of computing technology—something that he passed on to Mark.

Meta's social apps like Facebook and Instagram are the most high-profile part of its business, but the company has sought building out a hardware line of peripherals like the Quest headset, which combines virtual and augmented reality.

Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire is one of the most prestigious private preparatory schools in the US. Zuckerberg attended the academy from 2000 to 2002 and was captain of the fencing team.

After giving birth to their daughter, the Zuckerbergs launched the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015. The pair announced the charitable organization's creation in a letter addressed to their daughter. The Zuckerbergs pledged 99% of their earnings from Facebook over the course of their lives to advance education, cure disease, and transform public policy, something the letter says is a commitment to their daughter's future. The organization has since shifted its focus to artificial intelligence and science.

Mark Zuckerberg and Adam D'Angleo built a website called "Synapse," which created playlists for users based on their listening preferences and an algorithm to suggest new songs, in September 2002.

Shares are traded on the stock market. Once you buy a single share of a company, you are considered a shareholder of that company and may have certain rights as a partial owner, such as voting on business decisions.

Sandberg joined Facebook as the chief operating officer in 2008, after previously serving as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers' chief of staff under the Clinton Administration and the vice president of global sales and operations at Google. She built a personal brand for herself as a feminist business leader through becoming Facebook's first female board leader in 2012 and her 2013 book "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead."

Within 24 hours of launching in 2004, more than 1,200 Harvard students signed up to the platform, which quickly expanded to other Ivy League and Boston-area schools within months. By year's end, Zuckerberg left Harvard to run the company in California.

Internet performance artist Harriet Richardson is using AI and Meta's social media tools to make it appear as though she's in a serious romantic relationship with Mark Zuckerberg. While the images generate laughs, Richardson also says they're part of a larger satirical project aiming to highlight the larger societal impact of Meta's decision to discontinue fact-checking content across its platforms.

In Zuckerberg's 2017 commencement speech at Harvard, Zuckerberg said his best memory at Harvard was meeting Priscilla Chan in line for the bathroom at a party. In that speech, he said he told her, "I'm going to get kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly." The pair got married in 2012 and now have three kids together.

When Jesse Eisenberg hosted "SNL" in 2011 ahead of an Academy Awards appearance for his portrayal of Zuckerberg in "The Social Network," Zuckerberg actually came on stage. That was the first time the two met, and many viewers said the interaction was awkward. Eisenberg tried to meet Zuckerberg before filming "The Social Network," but his producers told him he couldn't for legal reasons.

While at Harvard, three students (Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra) approached Mark Zuckerberg with the idea for a platform exclusively for Harvard students called ConnectU. Those students sued Facebook, alleging that Zuckerberg stole the idea from the trio.

Burning Man is an expensive endeavor, most attractive and accessible to those with deep pockets and an interest in artistic endeavors. Therefore it’s no surprise the event attracts various famous innovators and entertainers, including the world's richest people.

Companies now make unilateral decisions once reserved for nation-states, such as controlling satellite internet access in active war zones and influencing global information flows. Lawmakers and the international order are struggling to keep up with technological developments, let alone regulate them.

The phrase was plastered across Facebook's office as a representation of the company's hacker mindset that fueled its early growth. However, Zuckerberg said he has since moved away from that motto and has focused more on sustainability as opposed to breakneck growth.

The app's ownership is now majority American, though TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who is Chinese, remains on the board of directors. It's unclear what, if anything, has changed for American users, as the company has historically kept the specifics of its algorithm a secret.

During Mark Zuckerberg's sophomore year at Harvard, he built a website that allowed users to rank and rate people's pictures from the school's online "facebooks" called Facemash.com, which quickly went viral. He was placed on academic probation for violating the school's rules around data, privacy, and computer usage. Zuckerberg says the website was a prank and he never intended for so many people to see it. FaceMash is credited with being the predecessor to Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest self-made billionaire in 2006 at 23 years old when Facebook held its initial public offering. In January of 2026, three AI startup founders—Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha—broke Zuckerberg's record and became billionaires at 22 years old.