https://www.yahoo.com/finance/markets/stocks/articles/mark-zuckerberg-loses-9-billion-191142608.html

Mark Zuckerberg Loses $9 Billion In A Day As Goldman Sachs Pours Cold Water On Meta Stock Rally

TOPLINE

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg lost almost $9 billion on Friday as Meta shares reversed following a 4.5% gain the day prior, after Goldman Sachs raised doubts about whether artificial intelligence hyperscalers can generate enough revenue to justify their massive capital spending.

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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, on Jan. 31, 2024.

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KEY FACTS

Zuckerberg’s estimated net worth fell $8.9 billion on Friday to $257.5 billion as of 2:30 p.m. ET. The loss came after Meta Platforms shares, of which Zuckerberg owns about 13%, dropped roughly 4% to $749.26.

The decline pushed Zuckerberg from No. 4 at Thursday’s close to No. 6, and he’s now trailing Sergey Brin at $259.9 billion and Michael Dell at $275.9 billion.

Zuckerberg’s $9 billion single-day drop is the largest loss on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list Friday and dwarfs the next-biggest decline—Larry Ellison’s $1.6 billion slide—by a wide margin.

Goldman Sachs warned Friday that AI hyperscalers, including Meta, need to generate roughly $300 billion a year in AI services revenue just to break even on their capital spending—and $1 trillion annually to earn meaningful profits—spooking investors.

KEY BACKGROUND

Meta had been having an impressive September run before Friday’s reversal. Shares have surged roughly 36% this month following the launch of Muse, a personal AI assistant that overtook ChatGPT at the top of the Apple and Google app stores. Rob Biederman, co-founder and managing partner at Asymmetric Capital Partners, argued the app’s rise changes the competitive calculus: “It’s logical that AI agents will become the front door to the internet for a lot of people, which puts the balance of power in Meta’s favour.” Goldman Sachs, however, released a note Friday cautioning investors about the extreme scale of AI infrastructure spending among major hyperscalers, specifically naming Meta alongside peers like Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Oracle.

BIG NUMBER

2.8 million. That’s how many downloads Muse had within two weeks, according to Sensor Tower.