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Mark Zuckerberg's fortune rose by about $25 billion on Monday, Sept. 21, after shares in Meta Platforms jumped almost 12%, according to Forbes' real-time estimates.
That took his net worth to $253.6 billion. It was the largest one-day gain among the ten richest people in the world, more than double Elon Musk's $12 billion rise the same day.
Wells Fargo raised its price target for Meta to $796 from $640 on Monday and kept its overweight rating, meaning it expects the shares to beat the market. The bank said the number to watch is how many people use Muse, the AI assistant Meta launched this month.
Muse is built to act on a user's behalf rather than just answer questions. It can book travel, send emails and control connected devices at home, and Zuckerberg has described it as a step toward delivering what he calls personal superintelligence across Meta's apps.
The early rise added about $12.9 billion to his fortune, and the stock kept climbing until the day's gain reached $25 billion.
Zuckerberg ranked sixth on the Forbes real-time list by Monday afternoon, about $14.5 billion behind Google co-founder Sergey Brin at $268.1 billion.
Meta holds its annual Connect conference on Sept. 23 and 24. It is expected to focus on artificial intelligence, software agents and smart wearables rather than virtual reality, the business Zuckerberg renamed the company for in 2021. Meta is widely reported to be preparing smart glasses without built-in cameras, and analysts expect Muse to be built into its glasses so it can see and hear what the wearer does.
The company has been building toward this for more than a decade. It set up its Facebook AI Research lab in 2013, released its Llama language models in 2023, and put its AI assistant into WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook last year. Zuckerberg has committed tens of billions of dollars to buying Nvidia chips and designing Meta's own.
He founded Facebook at 19, took it public in 2012, and owns about 13% of Meta.
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